The Adventures of Kiko Fluffy Pants
by EtherealMutation
Summary: Meet Emily Tennenbaum, a girl just like you. She dreams of one day meeting her hero, Riku. Will she succeed? Probably.
1. All American High School

**Before, I had a message begging people not to abandon this story. Now, I don't.  
**

******This story is an exercise in serialized loose-form structure that is based around satire, dark comedy, military science-fantasy, and metaphysics.** I'm leaving it largely as-is due to a lack of time and interest. Feel free to comment and discuss this story in any tone you like so long as you don't break any laws or terms of service in the process. Minor corrections such as typos (oh, the avalanche of typos that wouldn't wash away in all my revisions), incorrect names, and unfinished sentences would be awesome. Narrative, thematic and character inconsistencies that would require more than a paragraph to rewrite aren't going away.  


**I'm releasing all rights to the original characters and scenarios of this story (i.e. things not owned by Square-Enix, Disney, or any number of music labels) to the public domain. Ethically speaking, those that ****feel like copying and remixing anything from this story should give credit and send me a link, but honestly, I'll never find out if you didn't and wouldn't bother doing anything if I did. Enjoy.**  


* * *

Our legendary tale of intrigue, adventure, and mystery begins on a sunny autumn day in Hometown, USA. The birds are singing, the insects are biting and no doubt spreading some crippling epidemic that will wipe out the human race, and the squirrels are hoarding for the winter just around the corner. The natural cycle of life continues day in and day out on this beautiful blue planet, broken only by the irrational humans with their eclectic desires. Today is Friday and our protagonist is stuck in school, sitting through the boring history lecture about the battle of Concord. Why anyone thinks teenagers care about this crap that happened long before last week is anyone's guess. As the words of the teacher drone through the room, she pretends to take notes as she writes out another daydream based on her favorite video game series: _Kingdom Hearts_.

In this one, Riku is feeling sad about having let Maleficent use him and needs the warmth and comfort of an original character, Miss Kiko Fluffy Pants. Wise, perceptive, well-traveled, and pure of heart to such a degree unseen since Kairi and company, there is no grander beauty, no softer mind, no finer girlfriend than her. The perfect companion, always with the right thing to say with never a misstep or trespass to mar her flawless social record. Perfection personified. She is up to her favorite part of the daydream, where she... her original character relieves Riku of his burden of virginity, resulting in-

"Emily Tennenbaum," the teacher announces, looming over her desk. The thus-named girl looks up to see the towering man staring down at her, a look of passive disinterest in his face.

"Yes?" Emily asks, startled.

"I asked you a question," the teacher sarcastically comments.

"Oh, um... America won?" Emily answers, giving a weak smile. She is a very tall girl of 5'9", unnaturally thin and thoroughly lacking in muscle. Her brown shoulder length hair, hazel eyes, and frumpy T-shirt and jeans combo give her a boring look; as though she is cut from the cloth of a burlap sack compared to the silk and satin of the other people around her. An unfortunate reality mirrored to her by the teacher's unusually reflective glasses. Pretty clever to always mirror the students as being lower than him...

"No, the British won..." the teacher responds in a deadpan fashion, rolling his eyes, "Do you mind if I read your notes?"

"Oh, I don't-" Emily starts, the shock of her teacher grabbing the 'notes' anyway startling her, "Hey!"

"Let's see what we have here..." the teacher ponders, walking off as he flips through the 'notes', "My, my, I don't remember this part of the American Revolution... I don't understand how this is physically possible."

"Please give that back, Mr. Selacia," Emily pleads, her face going deep red with humiliation.

"You... I mean, 'Kiko' sure is flexible," Selacia continues, "She must be hollow inside, though. I don't see how else she could accommodate something the size of a tree stump. Is it painful?"

"Please," Emily implores, ducking down towards her desk to avoid the stares of her other classmates, "It's for my sex ed class."

"Oh, what a novel defense," Selacia retorts, slamming the notebook shut between his hands, "But it's not going to work on me. I used to teach the sex ed class and I already know that all it consists of is us telling you not to have sex. Certainly no smutty writing cribbing all the sex scenes from the GCSE biology textbook."

"I... I..." Emily stutters, her face a deep crimson as she unconsciously tries to burrow into her desk.

"I'm going to have to confiscate this, Miss Tennenbaum..." Selacia starts, giving a look of pensive thought for a second, "On second thought, I'm going to call you Kiko for the rest of today. Kiko, the question was how many British soldiers were in Concord when the first shot was fired."

"Why does all this even matter?" Emily responds, "This all happened so long ago."

"Because, Miss Fluffy Pants," Selacia continues, eliciting a wince from Emily, "We are trying to teach you good study skills and the ability to deflect boredom. There are a lot of jobs out there with boring things you have to memorize and it's my duty to prepare you for them. Look at my job, for instance: I have to stand here in fifty minute increments and endure students not paying attention as they write about their unrealistic sexual fantasies."

"You don't have to say it that way," Emily says, sheepishly.

"Please just pay attention and take real notes," Selacia counters, "Next time I catch you dawdling, I'm going to read this story for the whole class."

"Read it!" some jock in the back row shouts. A couple short murmurs erupt in parts of the room, just as quickly silenced by a couple glances by the teacher.

"Show some respect for your classmates, Mr. Mercer," Selacia dryly comments, giving a look that could kill, "Maybe you can tell us how many British soldiers were in Concord?"

"I... don't know..." the jock says, giving an exaggerated look of obliviousness on his face at the teacher. Now this is a product of No Child Left Behind if there ever was one.

"Right..." Selacia sighs, looking irritated as he starts writing on the board, "Everyone, please start paying attention..."

* * *

.

* * *

The bell mercifully rings to signal the changing of class not too long after this incident, the tension of the stares and whispered gossip of fellow classmates weighing heavily on Emily. She rushes out of the room as fast as possible, careful to avoid drawing the attention of the other kids as she strides out the door. Out of immediate sight of her harsh peers, she starts a run down the locker filled hallway while avoiding as many people as she possibly can. Once she reaches the sanctuary of her locker, she opens the door and ducks her head inside. Tears stream down her face as she tries to hold back her outpouring of negative emotion. How could a teacher violate her privacy like that?

"Looking good, Kiko," some boy from out of her view says as he walks by. Not even anyone from her class that she can recognize; rumors sure do spread fast with text messaging. It takes a few minutes for her to regain her composure, wiping away the tears and closing her locker. As much as she wants to spend the rest of the day in solitude, the school would only hunt her down and drag her into the next class. There is no escape from education.

She heads over to the lunchroom down the hall, turning away from a couple mean looks of the self-appointed 'guards' of the 'cool kids section' as she walks to the 'losers section'. As she files inside along with the other social outcasts that seem to make up the vast majority of the student body, she grabs a tray and goes down the greasy buffet. Today's menu is whatever is in surplus, with lots of moldy apples and brown meatloaf and some stuff that looked like it crawled in from a meth lab. Considering this was originally the snack aisle before the great social divide, it's not much of a surprise. She decides to just grab some stale bread and a carton of government issue milk as her 'lunch' for today. It doesn't take her long to find her friend near one of the exits.

"Hey, Emily," her friend greets, pulling out the chair next to her as she waves. She is about 5'2", her hair and eyes artificially purple from dye and contacts. She is dressed in some dark blue lace outfit with a small coffee stain on the left sleeve, a black beret adorning her head. In a crowd of losers, she stands out as their fashionable-unfashionable queen.

"Hey, Jamie," Emily says, placing her tray on the table and sliding her backpack down to the ground. She sits down facing the wall, huddling towards the table to try to avoid being seen.

"I see you got the stale bread sandwich," Jamie says, noticing the sparse contents of Emily's tray.

"I guess," Emily responds, "I wonder what the royalty is getting today."

"They have grilled cheese," Jamie says with indignation, "Grilled cheese! Can you believe that?"

"Yes," Emily responds, a tone of squashed desire in her voice. A proper lunch would do her good. It can't possibly help her near-skeletal figure to consume worthlessly empty calories in the middle of the day.

"Let's go get some," Jamie declares, getting up with poise and determination. Almost audacious enough to gain the attention of all the nearby outcasts.

"Let's not," Emily quickly says, motioning her palms towards the table, "I still have that bruise on my hip when Dana pushed me into the tray cart. She's standing guard today."

"I can't believe the school won't do anything about this," Jamie shrugs, reluctantly sitting down, "Can you believe it? Our parents' tax money going towards this bullying and social isolation."

"I can," Emily responds. At that moment, two boys walk by, slowing down as they go by their table.

"Hey, Kiko!" one of them calls out, "How's the sex ed paper going?"

"Piss off!" Jamie shouts, giving the boys the finger. Emily just stares downwards at the table, humiliated, as the boys walk by, laughing at them. Which is funnier to them is anyone's guess.

"See?" Jamie says, "They can only make fun of you if you let them. Just be firm and they'll go away."

"I had the worst class ever before I got here," Emily starts, forcing her tears back, "I was writing a story and my teacher grabbed it from me, describing it to the class."

"Your Kiko Fluffy Pants stories, I take it?" Jamie responds in a knowing tone.

"Yes," Emily says, looking away from Jamie, "I don't get what's so bad about it. Is it wrong for a 15 year old to daydream?"

"See, that's why you should be more careful," Jamie consoles, patting Emily on her back.

"I hate my life," Emily starts in an anguished tone, "None of the boys ever ask me out and nobody likes me."

"I like you," Jamie consoles, "And plenty of boys have asked you out. They sometimes ask me if you're available."

"I mean real boys," Emily quickly revises, going into a dreamy tone, "Like Jack Thomas."

"The captain of the football team?" Jamie asks, looking downright shocked at Emily, "But he's a jerk. He dumps every girl that doesn't put out five times a week."

"Well, maybe I want to put out," Emily counters, eliciting a wince from her friend.

"You're better than him," Jamie counters, "You deserve a nice guy; not some over-privileged, muscle-bound jerk. Let me introduce you to Marty."

"I don't want to go out with Marty," Emily responds, "He's so icky. Have you seen the clothes he wears?"

"But he's so perfect for you," Jamie says, "He's nice, loyal, and plays video games."

"Ixnay on the ideovay amesgay," Emily says, giving a shushing motion to Jamie, "What if the popular kids heard?"

"I think you're blowing this out of proportion," Jamie responds, "Lots of popular kids play video games."

"The boys do," Emily starts, "But the boys don't want tomboyish little brats like me. Boys don't like girls that play video games on their own or can beat them."

"I don't know what to say," Jamie responds, "I don't think anyone would decline a girl just because she plays games. A person that would is just an asshole you shouldn't date and I don't think many people even know about it, to be honest."

"I'm going to ask Jack out after school today," Emily says with little regard for the conversation, a dreamy tone in her voice again.

"That's a bad idea," Jamie says, "Come on, he's not worth it. He's going to just humiliate you the next chance he gets. He's an asshole and we both know this. Besides, didn't you just suggest being forward is something boys hate?"

"I've made up my mind," Emily states, ignoring the question, "I can't just be a wallflower my whole life. I need to take control of my own destiny and live the life I want. If I want Jack as my boyfriend, I'll have to ask him myself."

"I won't say 'I told you so' when it goes bad," Jamie sighs, "I'm going to be performing at the poetry cafe tonight at 7:00. After Jack turns you down, want to come? I can get you free coffee and everything."

"If I'm not on a date with Jack, sure," Emily responds in an obligatory manner. It's important to always keep an out when it comes to situations like this. After all, if one commits to an event and no longer feels like going, it's less a fall if it the commitment was always uncertain in the first place.

"Thank you," Jamie says, "I appreciate it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to head to the computer lab and check my email. I hope nobody sniped my auction."

"I wish I could be like you," Emily says, "So unashamed of being a geek."

"I'm proud of it," Jamie says, rising and picking up her artistically designed backpack, "You should be, too. All the popular girls will get after high school are washout jocks working at gas stations. Geeks like us will get the software designers that are going places."

"Whatever you say," Emily responds doubtfully, starting on her stale bread sandwich as Jamie walks out the door.

* * *

.

* * *

The last bell of the day rings, letting the masses out to their brief reprieve. The parking lot jams up really quickly as all the popular students drive their Audi and Acura and BMW cars out. If your car is less than 35 thousand bucks or not legally your's, you're not cool enough and you better not come out until the place is deserted because a harsh bullying awaits 'shovers'. Emily is too young to own a car and has little reason to be in the parking lot, but the way she figures it, it is her one opportunity to single out Jack. She already knows from rumor that he likes to wait a little after school so he can roll right out in a blaze of banshee tires and engine roar. Sometimes, he even waits longer to hold up the 'shovers'.

Her hopeful future boyfriend finally walks out, separating himself from the other football players as they head towards their convertibles and SUVs that will never touch a single blade of grass until they're in a landfill. What a great country. She follows behind him, walking up to him as he stops by a candy-apple red Mercedes SL65 AMG sporting blue leather seats and a 'Got Nitrous?' bumper sticker pointing at some brightly colored gas canister.

"Hi," Emily greets, waving and smiling at the tall, muscular guy as he presses a button on his remote. The car gives those two slight beeps and flashes as the locks pop up, the hard-top roof retracting backwards as some bass-heavy hip-hop song blares from the radio. 'Den SuperMAN, dat OHHhh~...'

"Hi, there, um... Kiko," the jock with the six digit car replies very loudly, wearing a mean smile as he gives an unfamiliar hand signal off to the side, "I heard about history class earlier. I wish I could have been there."

"Yeah..." Emily responds reluctantly, holding back her blush as she forces herself onward, "Want to go out on a date sometime? I'm free this weekend."

"Hi, Kiko," says a short blonde girl wearing a cheerleader outfit as she walks up beside the jock, "How's the hip?"

"It's... okay," Emily says, feeling really uncomfortable as the cheerleader wraps her arms around the jock. Kind of hanging off him like she's a toga draped on his shoulder, pulling herself in for a long, tongue-jabbing kiss angled just perfectly for Emily to see in all its ostentatious glory. She can just tell that there's no way she's getting out of this with her dignity intact, but would she really be the master of her destiny if she backed away so easily?

"I'm sorry, Kiko," the jock eventually replies with sadistic glee, barely even breaking away from the kiss to talk, "But I don't sleep with desperate loser girls like you. Why should I when I can have actual standards?"

"But-" Emily attempts, feeling too spurned to just walk away. Is it her pride speaking?

"Why don't you go write some more fairy tales about boys finding you attractive?" the blonde asks as she backs off from the hug, laughing loudly for a few seconds before regaining her composure and continuing, "Only way you'll ever get any action is as Kiko Fluffy Pants!"

"Oh, be kind to the loser," the jock comments in a mocking tone, "I don't want Kiko to kill me off in her next story."

"Ooh!" the blonde says, hiding behind the jock in a playful manner, "Please don't kill me, Kiko! I'm too young and beautiful to die in your stories! Please, think of how much worse the world would be!"

With that pretty much sealing this as a lost cause, Emily turns around and starts walking away. There's no way to salvage this situation. To stay any longer is only an invitation for more cruelty. So much for her stand-in idol having a heart of gold under his jackass shell. To think she put that much faith in some guy like him...

"Yeah, get to work on your revenge story!" the jock calls out, laughing, "Maybe Selacia will read _that_ one aloud!"

Emily holds back her tears as she walks down the parking lot towards the sidewalk of shame. How can anyone be so utterly cruel beyond belief? She's a good girl, loyal, virtuous; why are these such bad traits? Why does she have to be shunned because she grew up too big, or doesn't dress in skanky cloths, or simply not have 'it'? Why can't the world be more like _Kingdom Hearts_ where the good are rewarded, the bad are punished, and everything works for the better?

Around this large puddle she goes. One of those leaks from an old car, prismatic light bouncing off; probably a teacher's vehicle. She hears a loud engine roar followed by a deafening screech of tires and almost instantly gets smashed by some large object. The force of this sudden impact flings her head-first into the puddle of grease, no doubt ruining her hair and forever staining her outfit... not like it's a very good one, anyway. She glances up out of the stinging fluid to see a red Mercedes convertible cut off one of the teachers, the jock and the cheerleader laughing hysterically as the latter closes her freshly dented door.

"That was _so_ worth it!" the jock shouts at the top of his lungs through forced laughs as they roll through the stop sign of the exit and completely ignore the irritated honk of a car that has to swerve out of their way, "I guess I'll just have to drive the Porsche while this is in the shop!"


	2. iPhone for Life

Emily continues her walk of shame back towards her home, defeat hanging around her like a cloud of failure... and disease. Yes, disease. She must be infectious or something to warrant this treatment; what other explanation can there be? She must have cooties or rabies or SARS or something and she's completely unaware of it. It's only logical.

It's hard to believe that anyone would be so cruel in their senseless rejection of a perfectly fine and willing girl. What is so wrong with her that necessitates this treatment? She's clean, polite, and loyal; why must she be treated like an outcast? Is it because she's just not a good enough human being for them? Thoughts like these make her want to cry so very badly, but she doesn't want to be seen like this. It would just be giving those jerks what they want. No; she is going straight home and putting this behind her. She still wants to grab her destiny by the horns, after all.

It's here in Hometown's suburban paradise of prefabricated community neighborhoods that her residence lies. With paved walkways, a glass greenhouse pool, a small fitness building, and a meeting center, it seems almost fitting that nobody wants to know anybody else. Even with free exercise within walking distance and a practical guarantee they'll get immediate satisfaction, those that aren't too lazy to work out spend 120 bucks a month at an overcrowded private club two miles away. Perhaps it's the mystique of membership that drives them? Who wants to admit to using public services, after all?

As such, this place is something of a white elephant of an arrangement, but those tax dollars have to go somewhere and they may as well fuel their propaganda. 'Hometown, a community unto itself'... whatever that's supposed to mean. With so many unused areas, it's the perfect place for one to sneak around. Duck around the treadmills, weave past the pool shed, and stay in the shade. She can almost imagine the thriller soundtrack.

Emily finishes her weave through the abandoned walkways and jumps over the fence into the backyard of her house, darting from tree to tree lest she draw her parents' attention. Not like they really have a reason to expect her to come this way, but better safe than sorry. She quietly passes in through the rear door, sneaking up the stairs. Just one turn and she'll be at her room and sweet, sweet salvation from this awful world. Just a little further...

She walks around and gets a fright from a woman standing right outside her door. A shorter woman of 5'7" with brown hair and brown eyes holding a laundry basket containing Emily's clothing. None other than her mother and in the act of infringing her privacy. Is there nothing sacred in this world?

"Did you go in my room?" Emily spouts, shocked to see her sanctuary trespassed so casually. She has no such right.

"I did," her mother admits, smiling obliviously, "I promise, I didn't look at anything."

"You're so invasive!" Emily exclaims, outraged, "I hate this place!"

"Are you okay?" her mom consoles with worry all over her face, "You smell like engine oil."

"I'm fine," Emily states with false authority, nudging past and opening the door to her room, "I just fell."

"You're bleeding!" her mom says with worry, "Are you sure you're okay? I can bandage you right up."

"I'm fine! Stop smothering me!" Emily shouts, slamming the door. She sure showed her. She spends seven hours a day at that horrible school with the whole world peering over her shoulder; why can't her one single bastion from this cruel world remain uninvaded? Even now, her mother continues to stand outside for all she can tell. No carpeted foot steps yet to signal her retreat.

"Dinner is at 17:30," Emily's mom says through the door. Still with the invasion, if by sound instead of presence. Emily presses play and turns the volume somewhere around 8 out of 11 on her cheekily labeled stereo to isolate herself from the terrible matriarch and her constant surveillance. Her favorite band, none other than the legendary Queens of the Stone Age, with their landmark album _Songs For the Deaf_. Featuring gods of music Josh Homme, Nick Oliveri, and Dave Grohl, the drummer of such other major bands like Nirvana and Foo Fighters, what's not to love?

_The sky is falling  
Human race that we run  
It left me crawling  
Staring straight at the sun_

A bit too unhappy for her tastes. A quick couple presses with her ingrained memory of the track list bring it to 'Go With the Flow'. Much better. With that fast paced and moody guitar and piano drive to guide her, she strips herself of the forever ruined rags and start to assemble something a bit more 'artistic'.

* * *

.

**

* * *

**All things considered, 17:30 is really quite early for dinner. Many cultures such as Spain and Portugal have their dinners quite late at night; no earlier than 20:00. However, considering that lunch starts at the horribly early time of 10:22 for Emily, perhaps it's not that far from said cultures. Regardless, the half hour walk home leaves less than two hours of alone time to play video games. Why can't her family recognize that setting their meal so early robs her of valuable recovery time? Its timing even insures that she can't really get back into her game before she has to leave for the club. The adventures of Solid Snake will have to be cut short for the time being.

At least Emily feels confident in her outfit for the evening. Going to that club with her standard single color T-shirt and jean shorts didn't work so great last time, with the pushing and the shoving and the insults. They expect, nay, demand more from their patrons and Jamie had to make sure she can fulfill them. Now, she has a black blouse, a thin charcoal skirt that goes down to her knees, a pair of black slip on shoes, and a black purse. The sort of cheap quality, ten-bucks-at-most item made over in Taiwan and sold in Hot Topic for a shameless 250. Still, Jamie insisted and she managed to get it greenlit by her parents, so good for her.

Expecting nothing but the worst, Emily walks into the dining room. Her dad, a brown haired, green eyed man of great standing at his corporate job, is already seated at the six seat rectangular table while her mom is placing the last tray in the center. Barbecue chicken with corn, potatoes, spinach, white bread, and Diet Coke; the sort of stuff that makes one fat and ugly. She'll just have to get something at the club.

"Hello, Emily," her mother greets with a wide smile, giving a thumbs up, "Looking good."

"Please stop making fun of me," Emily quips, taking her seat at the end of the table, "I know you think I look like a slut."

"You're fine," her father assures, looking to his wife in a lovey-dovey fashion, "It's nothing compared to what your mother used to wear."

"Oh, stop it," dear old mom responds in a playful manner, blushing, as she sits down. Even in her forties, she looks marvelous given the right expression. Why does Emily's aging mother have to look so much better than her? It's the greatest mockery of all.

"God, stop making fun of me!" Emily fumes, dour expression on her face. The only thing worse than an insult is a mocking compliment.

"I talked with the Hendersons today," her mom casually starts, "That Marty is such a nice kid. You should go out with him some time."

"Mom, stop," Emily retorts, "I'm not letting you set me up on a date."

"The Hendersons told me what happened in school today," Emily's mom states, changing the topic once again.

"Nothing happened," Emily lies. As far as she's concerned, that may as well be the truth. If every day brings scorn and bullying, what makes this time noteworthy?

"You shouldn't feel embarrassed about writing stuff like that," Emily's mom consoles, "I should show you some of the stuff I wrote about me and Paul McCartney. It's wild."

"It was wrong of the teacher to do that to you," Emily's dad continues after a bite of chicken, "We're bringing this up at the next PTA conference. That is way too cruel a punishment for not paying attention and he should be docked for unprofessional conduct. And speaking of which, your mother told me that you looked like you got bullied again."

"Nothing happened," Emily maintains, not wanting to start that nasty cycle of retribution again, "I fell in a puddle while walking home. I'm fine."

"We wish you'd tell us who's bullying you," the mom starts, "We could get them punished by the school. They have no right to-"

"Why don't you let me solve my own problems?" Emily finally cracks, the lack of trust and persistence of her parents too much to bear, "Christ! The school won't do anything. They _endorse_ all this bullying. I eat stale bread daily because all the best food is on the popular kids' side of the cafeteria. I can't even take my own lunch or it will be stolen from my locker. Zero tolerance my freaking ass!"

"We can fix all this," Emily's mom starts, "We want you to have a good time at school. If you're unhappy, just tell us."

"God, stop this!" Emily shouts, getting up, "I hate you! You're trying to run my life for me! I'm old enough to make my own decisions! You're not the boss of me!"

"Please don't-" Emily's dad attempts.

"Stay out of my life!" Emily shouts, walking out the front door and slamming it behind her.

* * *

.

* * *

It's a good two miles to the center of town from Emily's neighborhood, the residential district abruptly changing over to the commercial with only a library to mark the border. Salons, a picture framing place, a sandwich shop, and two flower arrangement studios right next to each other mark the first shops. Disparate small businesses on the outskirts, far from the Borders, Jamba Juice, and Saks Fifth Avenue-dominated inner city. Small alleyways abound, with even the backlots of the brick and mortar stores surprisingly clean. Hard earned tax dollars at work.

Emily passes Laurel and hangs a right on Central, the smell of coffee and smoke emanating from the various clubs surrounding her. There's probably no official ordinance requiring all the clubs to sit clumped together, but here they are. The Bohemian block. This one particular club, a dive called 'Eighths and Sharps', is located in the basement of a building with an external stairway into a recessed portion of the sidewalk. One can practically see the vapor trails of the coffee steam rising from it.

As she enters, she sees the usual crowd of late teens and early twenties of confused gender all around. Lots and lots of black with shades and berets, all drinking coffee with one hand and reading from obscure poetry books with the other. It looks like something out of a TV commercial made by people who have never actually been inside a place like this before. As she stands there, two identical looking boys in the standard uniform of the moment walk up to her.

"Hey," one of them starts, bold and authoritative, "You're going against tonight's theme."

"What theme?" Emily asks, looking surprised. Why didn't Jamie mention a theme?

"That one," the guy on the right states, pointing at a sign. On it is a picture of a goatee'd guy wearing all black with a beret, a cup of coffee, and a poetry book, with the large text of 'Tonight is Look and Act Like a Prat Night here at the Eighths and Sharps'. At least it's honest. The small phrase 'goatee optional' seals it.

"You see the sign," the guy on the left states, "Out. Out!"

"But-" Emily attempts, the two guys starting to shove her out like some stubborn animal. At least they're careful not to cop a feel...

"That won't be necessary, gentlemen," an older voice says from the side. Emily turns to see a man in his early forties, well groomed and adorned. If all these boys and girls in here with their berets and overpriced coffee are just copies from a template, this man is the alpha; the mold from which all the others are cast. Going one above the young kids, he has his own well trimmed beard to finish the image of the self-important artiste. The sort of look only a person trying to skewer the archetype could ever reach.

"But Mr. Larkson," one of them attempts.

"No buts," Larkson continues with half closed eyes, "Leave her alone. She's a distinguished guest."

"Yes, sir," the two boys acknowledge, bringing their hands back to themselves and shuffling back into the crowd. With only two steps in, it's already impossible to tell them apart from anyone else. Larkson gives a soft chuckle as he approaches Emily.

"Sorry," he says, "Some people seem to take the theme a bit too literally."

"What is with this theme, anyway?" Emily asks.

"I find it helps to get it out of their system," Larkson replies, walking towards the bar, "Can't have too much of this going on or I won't get a whole lot of business. Come, let's get you up to spec."

"Is Jamie here yet?" Emily asks, cutting to the chase. If she's only here for one thing, why pretend otherwise?

"Not yet," Larkson replies, walking behind the bar and grabbing some stuff from below, "You're here really early, actually."

"I had another argument with my parents," Emily responds, "They don't understand me."

"They always seemed so nice and caring when I knew them in school," Larkson replies, putting a beret, book, and pair of shades on the counter, "Okay, I just have some Henry David Thoreau here. I hope you'll forgive me."

"I don't care," Emily casually dismisses, adorning herself with the objects, "Whatever will get people to leave me alone."

"You should talk with that Marty kid," Larkson starts as he grabs a cup and pours some hot brown liquid inside, "He was asking about you last night."

"Does the whole world want me to hook up with him or something?" Emily asks, adjusting her half-moon shades. Glasses never feel comfortable on her.

"Probably," Larkson replies, mixing in some white stuff and handing her the cub of Colombian brew, "He's a good kid. You should give him a chance."

"Thanks, but no thanks," Emily says, starting to turn around, "I'm going to go sit down and wait for Jamie, if that's okay."

"Sure," Larkson responds, "Take a seat at the front. Oh, and that coffee is on the house. Least I could do."

Emily walks through the myriad of artistes at their tall but tiny tables towards the one meter raised stage, a cup of coffee in one hand and a Thoreau book in the other. This is certainly the Bohemian lifestyle she's wearing like some mask for the benefit of her friend. Very rebellious... in a conformist sort of way. The seats in here all have a sort of black on white look, slopes and curves in awkward directions. Highly cushioned, they all have coffee tables nearby made of smoked glass. Certainly not any of the Swedish flat pack from IKEA. She sits down on one of the recliner chairs, putting her stuff on a nearby table and taking out a notepad and pen.

The muse hit her some time before she arrived and now, she must act upon it lest she lose her nerve. In her new story, Organization XIII has decided that Jack Thomas, Dana Billett, and Michael Selacia must all die. They have proven much too evil even for them. Sure, Dana and Jack made fun of her doing this, but is she really going to let that stop her? To carry out this hit, they assign member XIX, Lixemy, on this most glorious task. Bravery, awareness, and unrivaled mastery of the glaive make her capable of overcoming even the most dire challenge. None can stand before the Organization now.

Forty five minutes of writing and fending off dumb 'artistic' types later, the poetry slam finally begins. There must be about fifty people here, all practically anonymous in their black outfits. Where do all these people come from, anyway? First up is a girl of maybe 16 with beach blonde hair and brown eyes. She begins reciting a poem from memory:

_"Today, my life took a turn for the worse  
I realized this while writing this verse  
Everything around me is like an abyss of stabbing-"_

"Boooo!" the audience starts shouting with a fervor.

"Get off the stage!" starts one guy in the audience rhythmically, with everybody else joining in shortly after. The blonde girl stands there with tears welling up in her eyes for a few seconds before she finally runs off the stage, crying into her sleeve. Everybody cheers as she vacates the pedestal, leaving Emily wondering how this is somehow considered acceptable. She wasn't even past the third line. A young boy of about 17 walks on the stage, still indistinguishable from all the others.

"Today, I met my hero," he starts with a smug look, "And her name is Kiko Fluffy Pants."

Emily gets a jolt as she hears that name. This can't possibly lead into anything good.

"For it was Kiko Fluffy Pants that saved my life," the boy continues, gesturing with his flat upward palm, "With her incredible acrobatic skill, she saved me. With her hollow body, she smuggled me out of harm's way. With her divine kama, she liberated me. But who is Kiko Fluffy Pants?"

The audience murmurs for a bit. No doubt they heard rumors about this Kiko Fluffy Pants and a disruption in American History. Emily only hopes that she is not recognized. She doesn't have much of a profile at school and she looks just like the people surrounding her, so she should be fine. Just avoid looking like she's hiding something and she'll get through this. It doesn't take long before the person on stage continues.

"Why, I think Kiko is in the audience right now!" he exclaims, dashing Emily's hopes and dreams, "But where could she be? We should cheer for her to show up!"

The audience slowly starts chanting 'Kiko!' over and over again, the number of participants growing with each repetition. Emily starts burrowing herself into the chair, hoping not to be noticed. It's bad enough to get awkward stares and insults from classmates in groups of one and three. To be shoved into the spotlight in front of about fifty of her peers is way too much. After the longest thirty seconds of her life, a boy from a few chairs over notices her and decides to say something.

"There's Kiko!" he says, pointing right at Emily, "Right over there!"

"Kiko!" the boy on stage shouts, "Come join us up here! The audience should get to see your divine radiance!"

The audience continues to chant 'Kiko!' repeatedly as the boy stands there, holding his hand out to Emily in an inviting fashion. Emily tries to duck as far into her chair as possible, hoping that maybe they'll get the hint and leave her alone. They must have something resembling empathy as society's willing outcasts, after all. Unfortunately, it turns out not to be the case.

Two girls and a boy decide to take matters into their own hands and walk over to Emily. They grab her by her shoulders and force her to her feet, pushing her towards the stage. No way out of this now. Emily wears a positively delirious expression as she gets shoved next to the boy on stage. The crowd seems to be reveling in her misery. The boy turns and motions to her with his outstretched hand.

"Kiko!" he exclaims, motioning to the audience with a slenderness unbecoming of the situation, "The audience loves you! Go ahead, wave to the audience!"

Emily stands there, frozen with fear for what seems like an eternity before she gives a weak Princess Diana wave. The crowd goes wild with a truly terrifying malice.

"Blow kisses to the audience!" the boy says, the audience growing louder. Emily stands there, frozen, when the lights on the stage suddenly shut off.

"Enough of this," says Larkson, walking through the aisles between the seats towards the stage. A bit too late now, but at least some action is being taken. After all, it's his responsibility as host to prevent this kind of crap from happening. He gets on stage, turning towards the boy with a look of sheer appal.

"But tonight is 'Look and Act-" the boy attempts.

"It's a _parody_ theme," Larkson cuts off, "You know, to make fun of this sort of behavior? You don't think being a prat is a _good_ thing, do you?"

"It's all in good fun," the boy responds with absolutely no repentance. This is the kind of person that grows up to be a politician.

"Does she _look_ like she's having fun?" Larkson says, motioning towards Emily. She's just standing there, slouching and holding her hands over her face to try to hide her scarlet blush and dripping tears. As far from fun as one can get.

"She has-" the boy attempts.

"No," Larkson interrupts, pointing to the door, "Get out of here."

The boy reluctantly walks out with a smug shrug, the crowd just staring at him. While there are those that look just a bit ashamed of themselves, it's rather disquieting how many actually seem annoyed by this turn of events. They have been robbed of their emotional human sacrifice to fuel their schadenfreude and they would demand satisfaction if not for this authority figure.

"Well, that sort of killed the mood," Larkson admits to the audience with a chuckle, "We're going to have a ten minute break now. Get some coffee, talk with each other, figure out your poems, and get ready for part two."

Emily walks off the stage next to Larkson, shrinking away from the gaze of the audience. Didn't their mothers ever teach them not to stare? It must be the longest fifty meters of her life, but she emerges away from that horrible crowd with her dignity only partially destroyed. She sits down at the bar as Larkson walks around and resumes tending.

"I'm so sorry about that," Larkson consoles, "This is the bad part of this theme: people that use it to excuse being complete assholes."

"I hate my life," Emily starts, "Hate it. So. Much. It's terrible. I wish I could be somebody else. Somebody that isn't a weakling and nobody would dare make fun of."

"Don't say that," Larkson replies, starting up a cup of espresso, "You have so much going for you."

"Like what?" Emily asks, "I'm tall and ugly. No boys want to go out with me."

"What about all those boys that ask you out every time I've seen you here?" Larkson asks, failing to lighten the mood.

"They don't count," Emily starts, "They just want anybody. I even see them ask other people before and after coming to me."

"So many people ask me about you," Larkson starts, "'Is Emily available? Does she like flowers? Do you think she'll talk to me?' You're more popular than you think."

"And they show it by mocking me on stage like that?" Emily counters, "They don't care about me as a person. I'm just a piece of meat for them to use and throw away."

"They're young," Larkson replies, sliding the cup over to Emily, "And impressionable. That boy was a dick and the crowd going along with him was probably just mob mentality. Don't worry about it; they'll find something else to distract them in less than a week. They have short attention spans and won't remember whatever happened in your class."

"I'm just here for Jamie," Emily replies, taking a polite sip, "Where is she, anyway?"

"She probably got held up," Larkson responds with uncertainty, "I guess her grandmother hasn't been doing so hot lately. I'm sure she'll be here soon, though."

"I hope so," Emily says, picking up the cup and walking to some seat as far from the other people as possible. Not near as many people stare at her as she walks along, apparently past their dumb sheep moment and realizing that she is not in the best of moods. Maybe they aren't so hopeless after all?

Emily continues writing her story, only passively watching the performances on stage. Since she is already about halfway in and can't go back to rewrite Saïx's contract, she just writes some notes to include a massacre at this club for when she transcribes this to the computer and uploads it to her favorite fanfiction site. It shall be a glorious scene, with carnage that will make Xemnas blush with envy. Probably M-rated just to be safe. 'Tis a shame that she'll have to be killed by Sora like a punk and everybody will have to completely forgot she ever existed to fit in with the series proper. Bummer; maybe her fate can be left uncertain? That works.

With fiendish delight of the fictional retribution she inflicts upon her aggressors, Emily hardly even notices the time fly by. Half an hour goes by... an hour... an hour and a half... it's just about finished and Jamie is nowhere to be seen. Wasn't this supposed to be some big event? Didn't Jamie ask her specifically to come to this even though she knows she doesn't like it? This is a favor for her friend and she can't even be bothered to show...

Emily takes out her cell phone, a bit shocked to find it off. Must have forgotten to turn it back on after school again... not like anyone else respects that rule, but she does, for some reason. The usual Sprint wireless animatic flashes through, dropping into a message about four missed voicemails. Probably just her parents trying to dictate her life. She ignores them and calls up Jamie with her two button auto-dial.

"Hello, Emily," Jamie answers after less than a ring, sounding apologetic to an extreme. Well, at least she's prompt with picking up the phone.

"Where are you?" Emily asks, almost enraged to have wasted her evening for nothing.

"Grandma fell down again," Jamie starts with sadness overflowing, "I had to help her."

"Why didn't you call me?" Emily asks, outraged.

"I did call you," Jamie starts, "I called your house, but your mom said you left early, so I called your cell phone. I left three voice mails."

"Why didn't you call the club?" Emily asks, miffed at the lack of concern shown by her friend.

"I don't know their phone number," Jamie responds with trepidation, "I'm at the hospital right now and it will be any minute when-"

"Is that an iPhone?" some boy asks, staring at Emily. Some other boy grabs the phone out of her hand, flipping it over in his hand.

"No, it's just a Blackberry," the boy sighs, "Miss, you should get an iPhone and not some cheap imitation. Apple is a much better company than Research In Motion and-"

"Hand it back," Emily interrupts, her voice hovering somewhere around Absolute Zero. The boy complies, apparently noticing that she's neither in on the joke nor making easily interruptable small talk. Emily picks it up and tries to resume her conversation... only to be greeted by silence. It takes a couple seconds to notice the neutral top menu, signifying the lack of any active connection. She dials in a number and tries again, getting dumped into voice mail immediately. A few more attempts only build up her seething rage.

"You broke my phone!" Emily shouts at the boy. He recoils at her harsh words, apparently unaware of what he could have possibly done.

"I just-" he attempts.

"I hate this!" Emily shouts, grabbing her stuff and running out. Larkson tries to say something, but she just ignores him as she runs out of the club. All she wants now is to leave the self-important, bullying jackoffs to their own devices and get as far, far away as possible.


	3. I Hate When This Happens

Emily's total lack of finesse catches up with her pretty quickly, bringing her to a halt after maybe half a city block. Curse this horrible body she's forced to inhabit. Tall, lanky, emaciated, feeble, ugly, unfashionable; there is nothing good about it. No way to escape it, no way to build it up, no way to make it work in her awful, cruel society. She can't even last five minutes on an elliptical trainer and that's the wimpiest of all exercises. A life of anemic weakness is her ultimate fate and all she can do about it is sit there and take it. So much for 'being yourself'.

Storm clouds start rolling in with some sort of empathic awareness, blotting the stars and plunging the night sky into darkness. Just her luck that the worst day of her life will end with her getting drenched in rainwater. She only hopes that these clothes won't go bad as a result. Damn flimsy East Asian weaving. Maybe this stuff wouldn't be so rubbish if they employed consenting adults for their factories.

The library marking the divide comes within sight, those same pathetically small shops nearby. She starts to casually walk by an alleyway, noticing that the streetlights aren't working for whatever reason. Probably another brownout; seem to be a lot of these recently. Could it be that the wild teen parties are responsible? Perhaps some drunk jock crashed his car into a local distributor and went up in an explosion of sparks and ignited gasoline? That would make her happ-

Her attention is completely jolted when something rams right through her, the two launching into the darkened alleyway. She finds herself slammed into a bunch of scattered trash cans, the shock sending her into a state of delirium. How can this possibly happen to her in such a wealthy suburb? Where are the police? Why is nobody doing anything to stop this? Why must she be abandoned by the world like this?

An eternity of fifteen seconds go by. As she stares at the menacing silhouette that looms over her, her thoughts start to return to her. Things such as 'why does it just stare?' become more paramount than 'oh my god holy crap this isn't happening please make it stop god please please please please...' It is rather spooky for a faceless criminal to attack and then just stop, the only motive apparently being just that single transgression. Why even bother with only that? Tackling somebody out of public sight is a means to an end, whether it be violence or robbery. This thing seems to have lost its nerve. Eventually, the figure says something to break the deafening silence.

"Dear lord... what have I become?" it says in a nondescript voice, dashing away just as quickly as it arrived. Emily lies in the makeshift carpet of trash cans and debris, too shocked to move and too confused to reason. Why did it stop at such a crucial moment? What was the whole point behind this attack? What the hell is it? Did something willing to attack a young girl seriously have a conscience attack? Eventually, she gets up and straightens herself out. So much for this outfit; let the rain finish the job.

"Am I so repulsive that even rapists can't go through with it?" Emily muses, finding the conviction to face up to her fear. She will not be a statistic. She will stand her ground and prove herself not to be some total pushover. Sure, the thing probably can't hear her now, but is she going to let that stop her?

"Hey, rapist!" she yells out, "Are you too big a wimp to even go through with it? You disgust me!"

No response. Just as well since the stupidity of challenging a dangerous stranger like that hits her not even a second later. What if the bastard really was around the corner and decided to finish the business simply because she said so? It wouldn't exactly look very good on a police report, after all...

Emily eventually works up her bravery and walks out of the alleyway, indignant that she was robbed of her chance at unconditional sympathy. Maybe it doesn't say much about her moral fiber, but she has always carried some preponderance on the topic of rape. She already knows that even bothering to bring up this incident won't get any sympathy whatsoever. 'Oh, I almost got raped, but he stopped.' How can one get any sympathy out of that? It's the worst of both worlds, that's what it is. All the physical assault, none of the evidence or the knowledge that the person will get thrown in jail for a much more serious crime than battery. A lot of fear and panic, but without the deed itself, people can ignore it without guilt and just say 'you should be thankful'. Maybe that was the aim of this sub-human in the end? To torment someone with a fate possibly worse than rape? Who knows?

Emily continues her walk back home, mad at the world for messing with her like this. She doesn't deserve this. She doesn't deserve anything that happened today. She doesn't deserve that horrible teacher's mockery, that retrospectively jerkish jock's rejection, those sarcastic remarks from her parents, or the abandonment by her best friend amongst a whole group of pompous brutes. She doesn't deserve to be attacked by some unknowable person that will haunt her nightmares forever. She deserves better in life and unless she starts standing up to people outside her family, she's not going to get it. No. The first thing she's going to do when she gets home is pester her parents to sign her up for some self-defense courses and hire a personal trainer. Screw it; it's better to give a little ground to them than stay a weakling.

Dark street after dark street in this residential neighborhood starts to make Emily wonder. Doesn't the town have a separate power grid for each zone? Even if some jackoff jock or other stupid prep did something to blow out the distributor, it would just be one grid instead of two or more. She remembers that week of low lights at her school with some explanation to the effect of 'distributor spillover'. Even then, shouldn't there be something of a back-up to keep the streets lit? Society needs light to insure the safety of its citizens. In darkness, people can get away with nearly anything as was proven just shortly before.

What really disturbs her, however, is the lack of cars driving or other people in general. Perhaps it's not a packed urban area, but there is usually somebody out and about. Power walks, lawn watering, a kid sneaking back in after some illicit activities, racer jackoffs with gumball colored cars and no sense of volume, and such. She can't remember a night out where she didn't encounter a future-yuppie kid going to an unmonitored teen party or the police trying to snag them for easy tickets.

Instead, the whole block is just... barren. No people, no lights, and even the air itself seems to be dead. Has the town been evacuated and they just didn't care to tell her? With the unusual dark purple energies emanating from the clouds, there's every reason to believe it just might be the case. There's no way that's a natural phenomenon of any kind; must be some man-made accident. Did a local chemistry lab working on the mysteries of the universe accidentally drop a test tube or something? Given the severity of this, there will almost certainly be a report all over the papers and news tomorrow. Doesn't help one to sleep easier, but oh, well.

At least she won't have to stay out in the creepy darkness for too much longer. Linden Avenue is upon her, with that inane propaganda sign reminding her how great and glorious her community neighborhood is compared to that other, lesser town all the way out past that farmland. They probably have exactly the same sign proclaiming exactly the same neighborhood as being better than the Hometown slobs. Of course, since no actual reason for it being 'better' is given, it could mean anything. Better at wasting tax dollars on pointless signs?

Regardless, the lights are still out and there is nobody out and around. Nobody. This lack of discernible life isn't just troubling; it's downright frightening. Even assuming all the residents decided to go to bed early on a Friday night, there is usually some type of maintenance team around to clean the pools, sweep the walkways, wash the windows, or something. Anything to burn the excessive taxpayer money they have flowing through the system. Why aren't they here? In fact... where are the animals? Even the insects that usually pester her are gone...

The rolling clouds finally finish their invasion of the night sky, the occasional bolt of dark purple energy flashing off in the distance and yet, there is no rain. Who has ever heard of a pure thunderstorm? Then again, lightning is supposed to be white, so that only lends credibility to her belief of a man-made disaster. It's a good thing she has decent night vision lest she be effectively blind, but even then, things such as houses, fences, and cars all look like vague blobs in this environment. Even the bolts of energy do nothing to give these objects even the slightest definition.

Out of the blue, another impact sends Emily face first to the grass. Well, there's somebody. Once again, delirium pulses through, but with a mix of something else. Something defiant, something indignant, something urging her to take control of her destiny. Her body braces itself for what she thinks is coming, but at the back of her mind, she knows she's going to defy such a gruesome fate and take her attacker by surprise. A punch to the throat, a rip at the sensitives, and a thorough curb-stomping await this asshole...

...yet, that doesn't seem to be this attacker's ultimate goal. No, it just takes her handbag and walks away like it was something worthwhile. A purse snatcher in her neighborhood? Now that's just wrong.

With conviction flooding through her, she stands up and glances over the casually striding assailant. Appears to be a small, pudgy kid wearing tons of black all over, fishing through her bag with moves resembling the scratching of some beast. It takes out her notebook, holding it above its head as it makes some excited, indecipherable sound. They want her notebook of all things? It's not even like she's had this one long enough for any good blackmail material, but no. She will not give a single step to anybody that dares to transgress against her. No longer. The line has been drawn and petty theft is beyond anything she can stomach.

"No punk kid is stealing my work!" Emily shouts, starting to run at the kid as it does a double-take. She doesn't even get three steps towards it before a couple more entities tackle her and start punching her with a weak but noticeable force. This thing has accomplices to steal a notebook? Accomplices. For. A. Notebook. What is wrong with this world?

Still, the surprise at such audacity for something so trivial doesn't change the here and now. Emily, prone on the ground and unable to get up as a combined hundred pounds pile on top of her, starts looking around for a solution. She will not just let herself be victimized without putting forth the full effort to defy such a fate. If one does not carry their solution, one searches for it in their environment. Sure, she only just made that up right now, but it's no less valid.

She spots a kid-sized baseball bat in the nearby lawn only about three meters away. Kind of lucky that the neighbor's kids are so careless with their belongings; if she wanted to, she could also grab the toy tin truck or wagon, but a bat is good. She gathers the strength to crawl to it, advancing meter by bloody meter as these things tear apart at her dress. Just a little further...

Finally, she reaches the hollow aluminium bat, grabbing it and taking a wild swing behind her. Considering how packed her attackers are, it's only a given that the bat connects with at least one. With the load lightened, she rolls the other entities off of her and jumps up onto her feet. She didn't know she could do that, but then again, adrenaline inspires great feats. She assumes a batter's position, eyeing her four opponents as they stand right back up with some watery motion.

That's... weird. Emily starts to doubt that these are kids surrounding her, trying to think of some more rational explanation. She banishes the thought that these are Shadow Heartless no matter how much it fits. She knows that her video games are all just the imagination of Japanese writers and programmers sitting at board meetings, correlation to the real world non-existent. She's not delusional enough to believe that any such game is a reflection of reality; otherwise, she'd genuinely wait to meet the real Riku instead of substituting other people in his place.

Nevertheless, there things are here and she wants them gone. Throwing all her weight into her arms, she starts wildly swinging at the vaguely humanoid creatures. They don't put up much of a fight, dissolving into the ground in what appears to be thin blobs and sliming away from her. Perhaps these are some freak experiments on the loose? Still the realm of science fiction, though... well, fact is sometimes stranger than fiction. It's possible. Emily turns around to see the first entity running into her house. So it wants more of her stuff?

Just... no. Emily is still angry beyond belief that anybody would dare to steal her notebook and hell if she's going to let it steal more. If this happened any time before now, she wouldn't dare risk her life for it. She would run to Jamie's house or maybe the police, but the evidence that she is the last human being in the world isn't what kills that plan. No: something has ignited a fire in her by seeing her work get stolen like that and nothing will quench that until it is back in her hands and that thing is down for the count. The thunder of the dark purple storm grows increasingly closer with each long stride that Emily makes, the destination of the ajar front door seared into her mind by the flashes of dark lightning. Boy, is there going to be a pummeling tonight.

She rushes in, looking around and noticing the swinging kitchen door. Nice of it to leave a visible path to make this ass-whupping easier. Emerging into the room reveals a couple entities moving in to block as the one with the notebook runs through the other door. Emily swats away the pudgy things that jump at her, her arms spasming just a little at the exertion. This is getting too risky. She needs a better weapon, an edge to this conflict... perhaps a literal one.

She starts making her way to the rack of knives, bashing in the head of the unlucky blocker and wincing as a muscle fiber painfully twitches. Even with adrenaline pumping through her veins, she just isn't strong enough to keep using this bat. With conviction in her heart, she throws the bat at an approaching figure and grabs a large carving knife from the rack. It's barely even exposed to the air before she's forced to try it out, effortlessly stabbing into a nearby entity as it leaps for a tackle. It hangs limp on the blade for a few seconds before dissolving into an inky black substance, fading away into nothing. Very peculiar, indeed.

Weapon in hand, she runs through the door and stabs each of the dark creatures as they leap at her. More and more just keep appearing from practically every dark corner of her house, a fluidity in their formation. What are these things? It's still impossible for them to be Heartless; those are fictional creations no matter how much these resemble them. Are they some kind of animal? An animal drawn to her notebook? Not like it really matters; since they steal her stuff and trespass her property, they're going down regardless who or what they are. A quick glance around reveals the notebook holder waiting on the stairs, rushing up after their eyes meet.

Emily continues the chase of the notebook holder, a certain amount of glee at the creature's path. It's going to corner itself and when it does, it shall pay. Perhaps she'll spare it the knife and bash it with a chair or even her own fists. Why give it the luxury of a quick stab? Hopping up the stairs three steps at a time, she stabs away a couple more leaping creatures and tosses them behind just as quickly. These... things burst into more dissolving puddles of inky blackness as they tumble down the stairs, leaving no trace on the carpeting. Weird. The entity beelines down the dead end hallway and crashes into her room, slamming the door shut behind it. All Emily can do is smirk: there is no escape for it now.

She runs towards the door, getting tackled by another entity and very nearly stabbing herself as she falls down. She instinctively rolls over and stabs upwards into the entity as it tries to jump on top of her, causing it to dissolve into nothingness right on top of her. There's a certain coldness to the liquid; something more than just physical. No matter. No time to think too hard on it. That thing is going down.

Emily gets right back up and shoulder-bashes the deadbolt right off her door, weapon at the ready. Unfortunately, a piercing light emanating from the center of the room forces her to hold her hand up to shield her eyes. Damn night vision burn. As her eyes adjust, she starts to make out the form of a television with a Playstation II sitting on top of it. Emily can hear a tune she recognizes as 'Dearly Beloved' from her favorite video game playing through the speakers, the clarity of sound striking. Wait... isn't the power out? Is it back on? Who cares?

Her eyes now completely adjusted to the brightness, she notices the entity with the notebook standing on her bed. How polite of it not to take the opportunity. There's a certain calmness on its pudgy face, its blank yellow eyes staring at her with pensive tranquility. Emily starts slowly approaching it with her knife at the ready, the creature not making even the slightest move in response. Looks like it recognizes itself as a naughty child. Fitting.

Just as she readies her pounce, the entity throws the book at her. Emily misses her chance to catch it with her free hand, taken aback by the creature's surrender. She's still not going to give it any mercy, though. Before she gets a chance to punish it, the entity proceeds to jump off the side of the bed while turning into a blob in mid-air and sliding out of sight. How anti-climactic.

Emily stands there dumbstruck, unable to grasp what she has just witnessed. Why did this creature attack her and take her book just to lead her back to her own room? She was heading there by herself, anyway, and all it did was sacrifice a lot of its friends to her. And what is up with the TV and Playstation II in the middle of the room? She didn't set that up... in fact, they aren't even her own property. She has a 50 centimeter LCD television and a bulky console; not a 120 centimeter cathode ray tube with a slimline console. What is this stuff and where did it come from?

Thoroughly confused, Emily walks over to her door and flips the light switch to get... nothing. There is no electricity in the room... making the video game setup just that much odder. So not only is it not her stuff, but it isn't even plugged into the house proper? Creepy. She decides to investigate the electronics, walking over to them with caution. The television's oddly clear speakers continue to loop the piano melody, with the screen showing the usual _Kingdom Hearts_ title screen. However, it doesn't take her long to notice the options given are all wrong. Instead of 'New Game' or 'Continue', there is just one single line of text overlapping its box with the other squares blanked out.

Press Start to begin a new game

Emily stares at the screen as she stands there, confused and just a little scared. Is this some practical joke? If so, it is one very detailed, depraved one. It doesn't take her long before the revelation that she was stabbing living things for no other reason than because they got in the way of her notebook hits her like a sack of bricks. Is this what she has become? Some vengeful murderer? She tosses the knife away in disgust, looking down to her book in fascination. Something compelled her to fight for the book. What could it be? It's not like it even has anything more than some fluff revenge story within its pages... maybe the answer lies within the pages?

She picks up the book and tries to open it, but a flash of electricity shocks her hands. The resulting spasm causes her to drop the book and back away, completely involuntary yet very specific in movement. However, the book doesn't fall; instead, it starts hovering in midair and floating to a position over the TV, electricity arcing all around and even bouncing off her harmlessly. Just what the hell is happening...

It is only now that Emily's brain starts registering the proximity of the thunder and the huge flashes of dark purple light outside her windows. The soundwaves are in total sync with the bolts, the air pressure is dropping, and the floor is starting to tremor ever so noticeably. However, it isn't the lightning or thunder that bothers her. Oh, no. It is the progressively nearer sound of wood crashing apart with each bolt of dark purple lightning. It's almost as though it's seeking her out specifically...

It only takes a few seconds before the apparent eye of the storm starts to engulf the house, each bolt sending a shockwave through the building as it uneasily shifts from side to side. It takes all her effort to remain standing, holding position in the center of the room as her framed posters and shelves full of toys and memorabilia fall all around. There can't possibly be a hurricane in the midwest and there hasn't been a tornado here in centuries. What is going on?

Suddenly, the unnatural lightning starts clawing its way through the walls and ceiling, deconstructing the room piece by piece. Each impact punches a hole about half a meter in diameter, but the pieces don't fall inside the room like gravity dictates. Instead, they get suctioned through their newly made holes upwards into the sky. Several dozen more impacts later, the ceiling itself gives way in an impressive display of fragmentation as it separates from the house. It levitates a meter up over a few seconds before the whole thing collapses in on itself, scattering into a hundred pieces as it spirals upwards into the sky in a funnel of wood and shingles.

It's with his radical interior redesign that Emily notices the clouds in the sky are forming a reverse funnel directly above. The anomaly is converging into a sizable patch of inky blackness, the occasional dark purple spark flying out of the void only to be sucked back in after a few futile meters. The lightning continues clawing away at the remnants of the house surrounding Emily, each strike tearing off another patch that gets sucked upwards into the void. Surprisingly, in spite of the violent wind surrounding the area, only the occasional gust of wind is going through Emily's area, rippling her hair and dress. The same force that can lift a several ton ceiling can't lift a 100 pound girl?

The walls of her room eventually file down to floor level, offering Emily an unobstructed view of the landscape. All around, all she can see is the same inky blackness that is in the center of the sky funnel. A veritable ocean of unnatural ink flowing around in discordant patterns, swirling and colliding like waves. More of the entities Emily noticed earlier are popping above the surface before diving back in, giving an almost dolphin-like appearance as they swim through the blackness. They are all converging towards this one patch just under her view near the house. What is this...

Meanwhile, the dark purple lightning continues to tear apart the floor from the outside in towards Emily, the radiant electricity starting to raise her hair. Why isn't it striking her or the television? Lightning is supposed to find the shortest path to ground, yet it seems to be methodically destroying her room in spite of its nature. Even the nature of the bolts seems particularly odd, leaving behind quickly extinguished spherical cells of electricity. They eventually expose the patch the entities are all rushing, revealing a large mass of black starting to emerge as the entities leap inside.

A figure starts to form from the mass of blackness, lumbering upwards straight out of the void. Gravity seems to be fighting to keep it down, but even the laws of physics are unable to govern this creature. It initially starts out with the same blobby, vaguely humanoid appearance of the smaller entities, but as it rises, the inky blackness drips off and gradually reforms into a more concrete form. The arms and legs slowly lose the excess substance to reveal them to look like some twisted mockery of the human form, with an angular shape completely incapable of biological origin. The legs end in some thin, folding triangles and the arms end with huge claws of an almost birdlike origin. The head finds itself surrounded by stray tendrils of a black hair-like substance, with two glowing yellow eyes snapping open on its stony face.

The primary focal point, however, is its midsection... or, rather, the lack of one. What appears to be the shape of a heart is missing from it, leaving a gaping hole with perfectly smooth walls. An impossible creature, flying in the face of Darwin and all those who follow him. Something with no concept of physics, no concept of synergy, no concept of evolution, no concept of common sense. The destruction of logic, reason, rationality, and sanity, all rolled into one thirty meter tall humanoid.

Suddenly, it hits Emily like the crumbling wall of reality. There is no other potential logical explanation to it any more. Her mind had been racing with ideas of what is happening, but the similarities are finally too great to dismiss in spite of how unlikely they seem to be. This is definitely a reproduction of what destroyed the Destiny Islands in the first _Kingdom Hearts_. It is unmistakable; uncanny, even. The small black creatures are Shadows and the large creature lumbering its way up is Darkside. The true horror of this starts to smack Emily's sanity like some blender on a table with its trigger jammed in. Sure, she played through the game a dozen times, but she always knew at the back of her mind that everything would be alright in the end. It would not be rated E or have a Disney connection if it ended poorly.

However, she now realizes just how truly terrifying of a situation she's in. No keyblade is coming to save her. No childhood friend is going to safeguard her heart. There isn't going to be an awakening in Traverse Town and a fateful meeting with Donald and Goofy. There isn't going to be a space ship and an eventual grand plan to defeat the Heartless and restore her world. She is no hero, no protagonist. She has no destiny, no prophecy, no importance. She is just another civilian caught in the struggle between light and dark and she is just going to be consumed into nothingness like any other person. There shall be nothing to mark even her existence once this is over; not even a stray molecule. This is truly the end.

Emily continues to stare at her rapidly shrinking room, the void closing in with each splinter of wood. Amongst the overwhelming despair and fear nearly enveloping her brain, the stray thought of what is keeping the floor up creeps in. With each piece of carpeted wood that breaks off and immediately gets suctioned to the portal up top, the wind around Emily gets more violent without toppling her over. What to do, what to do...

...what about this TV? Her fixation on the chaos around her almost drowned out the fact that there's still this bizarre video game setup with a flying notebook over it. With little else she can do, she grabs the Playstation II controller and mashes the start button. Nothing happens. The repeating melody of 'Dearly Beloved' continues without even a sound to confirm her button pressing. Another mash. Nothing. Mash. Nothing. All the other buttons and various combinations. Nothing. With the truly final solution proving to do nothing, she falls to her knees and cries out to the void-consumed heavens.

"Why?" she shouts, tears pouring from her eyes, "Just... why?"

Not like she ever stood a chance of getting a response with these words, but what harm could they do? Still, the lightning simply continues its destruction around Emily, stopping at a border less than a meter away from her and the supernatural electronics. The single patch of floor seems to be almost floating, a bit wobbly and unstable. Is there some invisible barrier protecting them? Is this Heartless invasion enough to screw over the physics of the universe?

All of the sudden, a dozen lightning bolts converge from near the funnel point into a single thick purple bolt that strikes the floating book, television, and game console. The electricity seems to linger for a few seconds longer than something near-instant should before all the objects burst into a thousand white sparks. This spray of sparkles gets suctioned up into the vortex in short order, consumed just like every other piece of the house. Well, so much for that being her salvation.

With that, the wind around Emily starts taking a suddenly forceful approach. She tries to duck further onto the floor in order to keep herself from getting launched up, but it is of little use. The floor started splintering on its own, drawing closer and closer to Emily. She grabs onto the sides of the remaining planks as the wind started trying to suction her up into the vortex. Even though she knows full well that there is no way out of this, she still can't bring herself to let go for some reason. No, she will survive... yeah, right...

Still, she keeps grabbing at the increasingly shrinking floor as pieces break off in her hands, eventually missing her chance to grab a solid piece with either hand and going into a reverse free fall. She flies up into the air, spiraling as she gets sucked into the inky abyss waiting at the top of the sky. Her last vision is of the last bit of floor giving way, removing what remains of the original world as the inky darkness finishes devouring the landscape. For that fleeting second of awareness that continues as her vision blanks out, she gets to truly appreciate the marvel of the Heartless. End of world, end of life, end of existence.


	4. Munchkinism

Much to Emily's surprise, this isn't the end of her story. Oh, no; she has a long ways to go before she'll be allowed any peace. After all, who wants to read a story where the protagonist whines for three chapters and dies in some anti-climactic fashion befitting a civilian?

Consciousness recovering, our protagonist finds herself gently floating down to a pinpoint of light in a sea of intangible black void. A thousand thoughts stream through her mind all at once, the primary one being 'Am I in the afterlife?' A valid question, perhaps, given that she was obliterated beyond the smallest molecule. Perhaps religion really was onto something after all?

She stares at the growing patch of light below, the form of a circular platform growing clearer by the second. A full body portrait of a young brown haired boy in an elaborate black and red outfit with splatterings of other colors is the focal point, his form dominating the frame. He is holding what appears to be a large grey and gold skeleton key, leaning backwards at a bit of an angle. Around and under him are circles containing the busts of other people, an ornamental design linking it all together. Kind of looks like one of those collectible plates sold at gift shops.

Eventually, Emily lands on the platform and collapses almost immediately. Seems she forgot how to stand some time before reaching this mysterious place. She lies there for a minute or two, her confused brain absorbing all the details. The area seems tranquil enough and the ground has a solid, glassy feel to it, but it makes no sense to her. What brought her here? By all accounts, she should have faded into oblivion with the rest of her world. It can't possibly be that everything teleported when it got sucked up in that vortex because there's no sign of the house anywhere. Why would it only selectively bring her here alone?

Eventually, she forces herself to stand up, rearranging her surprisingly repaired outfit. All the rips, tears, and stains of dirt and bodily fluids are all completely gone and the fluidity of the weave is much, much greater than the cheap East Asian sweatshop labor of before. To think clothes so unlike her real self are the ones that would accompany her on this spirit journey... or whatever. Not like Native American mythology is any less valid a comparison given how this place is a total mind screw. Once she finishes adjusting herself, a soft male voice of indeterminate ethnic origin rings through her mind.

_So much to do, so little time..._

Emily stares blankly for a few seconds as this sinks in. There is something else out there and she has no clue who, what, or where it is. Her ears don't register anything, but yet, the message comes through crystal clear. Now she's forced to accept that telepathy is real? Well, given that she just witnessed a rainless, purple thunderstorm caused by inky blobs of darkness completely destroy her world in a whirlwind of chaos and destruction, telepathy seems kind of tame...

_Take your time. Don't be afraid. The door is still shut. Now, step forward. Can you do it?_

Emily reluctantly takes a few steps forward, now within a sphere of familiarity. Whatever is happening, it is conforming to her favorite video game. She knows that with a few steps, she'll come across the trapezoid stones with the sword, shield, and staff floating above. She also knows that the 'best' option is to take the sword and sacrifice the shield: just like she does with all her playthroughs. Evasion and proper parrying are vital and the ability to sink damage like a sponge doesn't do much in the long run. To think that she's being cast as the hero of her very own adventure...

_Power sleeps within you. If you give it form... it will give you strength. Choose well._

The trapezoid stones rise up, but they don't carry what Emily expects. Did the caretaker of this realm read her mind and decide to throw her for a loop?

The one on the left has a suit of ornamental plate armor standing upright, a motif of silver and red painted over it. Intricate designs adorn the armor, culminating with a red European dragon done in only three contrasting shades and strikingly angular corners. Has sort of a pensive, alert stance; something that practically screams 'don't mess with me'. The two arms are bent around in front of it, holding a large silver and red sword downwards towards the ground. The left arm has affixed a shield almost as tall as the suit with a significantly more detailed portrait of the dragon, in flight and breathing fire. The lack of a helmet is the only thing missing from this image of a classical European statue of armor. This thing could probably survive the apocalypse.

The stone in the center has a full body dark blue mesh outfit, the gloveless arms folded in defiance. The belt has two holsters carrying semi-automatic pistols on the sides of the hips, with three magazines on each side of each holster. Two large bowie knives are sheathed diagonally downwards above the buttocks, handles angled at an X shape for effortless draw. Strapped on the back in a diagonal is a large rifle with a scope, practically as big as the expected wearer of the outfit. Hovering in place above the collar are a pair of sunglasses with a thin horizontal ovular design in the lenses. Kind of an off-putting outfit stolen from that movie Wanted or something. Pass.

The stone on the right has a minimalist silk and straw outfit, with a motif of different shades of green and green-yellow in a patchy, organic layout. While the other two look like they could have some frame holding them up, this outfit is very deliberately hovering on its own. The sandals, skirt, and sleeveless overcoat are all free floating objects, arranged as though some invisible model inhabits them. Hovering in front of the outfit is an ornamental wooden wand and book, unreadable runic symbols adorning the latter. A brown, tattered leather belt is affixed above the skirt, with a couple pouches and flasks of glowing liquid strapped to it. Wearing something like this around the medieval Catholic church would be a death wish.

Emily stands in the center, looking sequentially at each of these outfit collections. This has thrust her back out of that sphere of familiarity, what with the game itself starting with just simple, metaphorical pieces of equipment. While the stone on the right obviously represents magic, the other two baffle her. The one on the left has a full suit of armor, but it also carries a large sword. Is it supposed to be offense or defense? It can't be both and still follow the game system. And the one in the center baffles her with the total anachronistic implications of a Matrix-style assassin being within this game. There are no guns. They do not fit thematically. This does not follow.

Emily eventually decides to walk over to the one on the left, hearing the voice call out in her mind:

_**Warrior**__ - You stand in the middle of the fray, effortlessly deflecting the harshest blows and deadliest strikes. You are a steel wall, a guardian of all that you hold true. Your implacability is second only to your swordsmanship abilities, crushing the most dire foes with impunitive ease. A bulwark against the wicked. Comes with plate armor, a canvas shield, and a sword, all blessed by the draconic god of invulnerability. Is this the power you seek?_

Emily shakes her head as she responds with a simple 'no' under her breath. She doesn't much like the heavy armor and its focus on some unfamiliar deity. Who knows what deals she would have to make with the so-called 'god'? She's never been a religious type and having to start when there is a retribution for ineptitude is a bit much. Besides, what if the rituals involve tasteless or even unabashedly evil actions? There's nothing that suggests this to be a kind and just god, after all...

She backs off and walks over to the stone on the right, the voice calling once again:

_**Mage**__ - The elements bend to your will as you command the forces of nature to do your bidding. Your ability to manipulate the universe around you is second only to your stunning beauty. Aphrodite cannot compare to either your radiance or your godlike power. Something just short of a goddess. Comes with a wand, a spellbook, and a gemstone ring of your choice that serves as a conduit to the deities. Is this the power you seek?_

Emily declines again. She doesn't know what this 'conduit' involves and if it will make her subject to the whims of the deities. That's much worse than just a single deity of war; she would have to split her attention across multiple distinct personalities and the possibility of a conflict between their goals is not worth it. Not to mention that the aesthetics imply witchcraft and that could easily imply that these deities want her to cause strife...

She walks away, heading towards the center stone for posterity. May as well hear it out to make sure she isn't misinterpreting it. The voice predictably starts its description:

_**Assassin**__ - You move from world to world like a ghost, a bad omen to those who defy you. Your tracking and infiltration skills are second only to your ability to kill anything and everything you set your focus upon. Silence and death incarnate. Comes with twin ridged bowie knives, twin FN Five-seveN pistols, a Barrett M82A3 sniper rifle, and fashionable sunglasses. Is this the power you seek?_

Emily declines yet again, walking back to the center. Something like this is just tasteless to the universe of Kingdom Hearts. It is a place guided by valor and honor. Skills like these are more suited for villains and mercenaries alike. Not the hero of a grand fantasy epic meant to save the universe from an all-encroaching evil force that wants to obliterate everything good and just. Those who stick to the shadows cannot light the path.

So here she is, presented with three choices she doesn't entirely like. The allure of being strong and formidable is great, with her inability to assert herself in the face of adversary being one of the big sources of her sadness. Being unable to stand up to that jock and his girlfriend was just one of countless situations where she could do nothing but take it all because she was both physically and mentally weak. To be able to take this power and show those who would trample her retribution is tempting. Stand strong, stand tall, and command respect... what's not to like?

However, the implications of the draconic patron deity are too vague. The choice of the word 'draconic' seems to suggest that there is something oppressive about it. Is she going to be required to do distasteful things for her god in order to keep her power? Or maybe she will have to become more like a dragon in the process? As cool a thought becoming a dragon is, she already knows that nobody who has ever turned into a scaled creature in a Square or Disney work has either been heroic or victorious. Who can love a thing that one can't hug? And there is the fact that armor like that is very heavy and probably requires assistance to put on. Would she have to wear it full time? That didn't seem too appealing...

With the power of the Warrior not feeling very attractive, she focuses her mind on the Mage. She doesn't like that it seems to treat physical ability as tertiary at best and the outfit seems to provide no purpose but to show off her figure. No armor, no warmth, no protection. She isn't too keen on the bare midriff and miniskirt, but it suggests that it would change her to become gorgeous and thus able to make it work. One of her wishes has always been to be beautiful and respected by everybody. Maybe if she had been beautiful, the jock would have accepted her. In fact, she would have never been cast off as a geek in the first place and he would be coming to her. 'Actual standards', indeed.

But once again, it suggests that she would be subject to the deities. What if they guide her mind? This presents even more problems than the draconic god because conflict could arise over their avatar. Worse, imagine if they start fighting. One wants her to drink some coffee while the other demands espresso. Utter chaos. She also knows that the games have MP limits; what happens when she runs out of MP? She'd still be her frail self and the Heartless aren't going to be swayed by her beauty. Mindless creatures seeking only to destroy the universe and corrupt the innocent would be all too happy to tear her down.

In counter-point, there is nothing that suggests that she actually has to fight the Heartless. Sure, she might have to kill one or two every now and again, but her beauty and magical power would allow her to get the attention of the man she always fantasized about. There is no greater weapon or armor than those willing to fight and die for her. But still, she had to keep the flaws in mind. This is a permanent life change on her hands and she can't rush it through. It's not like she's choosing between a Playstation or Xbox for Christmas...

Emily thinks back on the Warrior. There is no MP limit to swinging a sword and it no doubt suggests that melee attacks would be pointless against her. 'Bulwark' certainly sounds impressive on its own even if she doesn't know what it means. However, given that there's no perfect solution, does that mean she's vulnerable to magic? Would she go down with one simple lightning bolt from a Yellow Opera? And still: would the armor restrict her movement too much? However, it seems like a necessary evil to keep her body safe... even though there's no helmet. Maybe the enchantments of the draconic god offer some magical protection as well?

But yet again, she needs to consider the implications of her strength coming from magic. Maybe there actually is an MP limit that gets passively consumed over time while she wears the suit? It would be highly inconvenient to find herself unable to move in the heavy armor once she ran out. And then there's the possibility that she'd have to bargain with the deity to keep her tank full, leading back to the potential that it would require inconvenient or downright distasteful actions. Harvest the blood from princesses to feed the dragon god... no, thanks. Still, the mage has its problems-

_The power is your's to choose, but it won't be available forever._

This new mental statement gives pause to Emily. The game doesn't care how long it takes to decide anything. It will just sit there until the player takes control; after all, it has no agenda but to serve. Here is an entity that seems to not only care, but also has a limited patience. Perhaps communication is the best path?

"I have some questions about these choices," Emily shouts out to nobody in particular. No matter where she looks, there is absolutely nothing. Just the platform and a black void surrounding it. Maybe this thing is hiding under it?

_I have given you all the information you need. It's now up to you to choose a path._

"Where are the sword, shield, and staff?" Emily asks.

_You chose to become a new person. You need to choose who you want to be._

"So I'm dead?" Emily asks. Painfully obvious question given that her clothing has somehow been resurrected, but obvious questions are par for the course.

_Your body from the old world is gone. You need a new one._

"But I'm here right now," Emily responds, "I'm even wearing my old outfit."

_Your soul is here. Not your body. You need to choose a new one._

"So this outfit is part of my soul?" Emily asks, confused. She can't accept that premise. It's just... stupid.

_Yes..._

"...but these are just choices of abilities," Emily says, shoving that implication out of her mind, "Not physical traits."

_I thought the abilities made it clear. You'll be stocky and muscular as a Warrior, lithe and agile as an Assassin, and beautiful as a Mage. What more do you need? A before and after picture?_

"But what about hair color?" Emily asks, searching around the room, "Eye color?"

_They'll just be whatever you wish within the parameters. Please choose something._

"I have more questions, though," Emily starts, "Who are these deities?"

_They are your companions._

"But what does that involve?" Emily asks, frustration starting to creep in, "Do I have to work for them?"

_You just have to treat them like friends. That is it. Choose something._

"So that means I'm not their pawn?" Emily asks.

_Friendship is mutual._

"Do I get to take my armor off as a Warrior?" Emily asks.

_Yes, but there wouldn't be much reason to take off your armor._

"Yes, there would," Emily responds, "What about-"

_I have a schedule to keep and I know enough about you now to choose for you._

"What do-" Emily starts, stopping in shock as an invisible force pushes her on top of the middle rock and yanks her head down and up. As the force lets her loose, Emily finds herself gently lifted off the ground by another invisible force. She isn't even allowed to choose her own body? What was even the point of offering the choices if they can be forced upon her? This is a lifelong choice that can't just be rushed through over a few minutes. Not like she can do much about it now...

As she hovers in the air, her black Hot Topic outfit dissolves and leaves her naked. She watches as sparkling clouds envelop her body, painlessly molding and rearranging its structure. The muscles in her arms and legs puff out a bit, bulking up and then slimming back down to a more streamlined shape. Her stubby fingers lengthen and slim, her hands now capable of great dexterity and precision. Her lanky figure reforms itself, fixing her posture and filling in her shoulders, thighs, and breasts. Her hair straightens itself from the split end clumps and rearranges itself into a short ponytail. Just as her hair gets perfected, it shifts all at once from brown to navy blue. With her physical structure all set up, she watches as her acne and mole ridden skin peels off to reveal smooth, consistent, and stunningly radiant perfection usually reserved for body moisturizer advertisements.

With her body now reformed, refreshed, and detoxified, the clothing starts hovering in front of her. As the last of the cloud leaves her, she finds her legs forced straight for the pants and boots to slide on. With the thick mesh trousers on, the belt slithers around her waist and loosely buckles up front with a perfection of positioning. The holsters and sheathed knives reattach themselves, all at perfect distances for their draws. Her arms get forced in front as the form fitting dark blue top slides on, attaching itself to the pants via hooks under the waistline and zipping up at the back. The outfit rearranges itself, straightening itself out for maximum agility and comfort before finishing with one last tightening yank of the belt. Without much warning, the rifle plops right on her back and straps itself around her chest. Even with the levitation, the weight seems to drag her down.

The rest of the outfit and equipment finished, the sunglasses fly in and gently drop themselves near the tip of her nose. They might look good in context, but they don't have much function but to make it blindingly obvious she's not to be trusted. With everything set up, the force gently drops her down as the trapezoid stones all crumble into the ground. Dressed to kill, but with all the wrong clothes, gear, skills, and outward attitudes for heroism or the Kingdom Hearts universe in general. Emily starts to feel rage at her once-in-a-lifetime shot not only robbed of her, but subverted into... this.

"What the hell?" Emily shouts, indignant, as she rips the sunglasses off and throws them at nothing in particular. Even with all her newly-formed, indeterminate strength, they just bounce harmlessly off the glassy surface.

_You thought of all the flaws of the other two options, but at the same time, you dismissed the obvious choice out of hand. I just did the nudging you didn't want to do yourself._

"How is this the best option?" Emily asks, holding her arms in front of her, "This has no magic, no defense, and no beauty."

_You don't need defense when your opponents can't find you. You don't need magic when you're naturally skilled and besides, magic is a liability. And beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Are you not beautiful now?_

"I'm still too tall," Emily starts, staring at her legs, "No man wants anybody that can look them straight in the eye. It's threatening. You made my fingers too long. And this outfit is terrible. It makes my small breasts look even smaller."

_They're perfectly formed C cups now..._

"C cup my ass," Emily responds, "That's another thing: my thighs are too thick and it makes my butt look big."

_You need good thigh strength for pushing yourself off the ground. You're an assassin now and you need to be able to get into hard to reach places and away from pursuants. And your butt is not big. Stop looking for excuses._

"And my hair," Emily continues, running her fingers through her braid, "My hair is still too short."

_An assassin can't let her hair get caught on the terrain. It's already borderline to have an Audrey Hepburn length._

"I don't want to be an assassin," Emily starts, "It's out of place."

_You think space ships with lasers are fine, but guns aren't?_

"Do you see anybody using any guns in Kingdom Hearts?" Emily asks.

_Clayton, for one. Also those Lilliput soldiers and the pirate Heartless. Look, I'm going back to the script now, so kindly shut up._

"But I'm not finished yet!" Emily shouts, miffed that it could be so callous about all of this, "Change me back!"

_You have gained the ability to fight._

Suddenly, ten meters in front of Emily, a couple black creatures appear. Swirling masses of inky blackness formed into pudgy, awkward humanoid shapes resembling overweight children. The darkness seems to struggle to even hold itself together, antenna-like spirals sprouting from their heads and rapidly evaporating drips from their claws. Their naive eyes betray their vicious stance and predatory movements. A creature without apparent moral, reason, or logic; instinct at its purest and a desire for chaos and destruction it cannot even comprehend. The Shadow.

_There will be times you have to fight. Keep your light burning strong._

The Shadows all start their odd gaits towards Emily with claws at the ready... not like she has anything to worry about. If she could kill them easily as her old weak self with a kitchen knife, what chance do they stand now? She instinctively unholsters the gun on her right side without a glance, shooting each Shadow in between the eyes with casual precision. They all burst into inky black blobs before dissolving into nothingness on the glassy surface. A total violation of conservation of mass, but these are creatures of chaos: of course they can break the laws of physics. Emily decides to test her coordination by twirling the gun by its trigger guard for a second, tossing it up towards and bending her hip towards it. It lands perfectly in the holster. Sweet.

_Behind you!_

Emily senses an entity form to her rear. How? Who knows? She grabs a knife with her right hand and spins around on her heel, stabbing into the Shadow with neat precision. Just like the others, this one dissolves with inky fluid chilling to the touch. Her victory assured, Emily sheaths the knife without even thinking about it and then examines herself in awe. She has never had good coordination in the past; it feels so alien to have it now. Could this be the start of something beautiful? Alas, it's still the wrong set and she must get this fixed.

A door rises up in front of her. She sighs and walks over, only putting a tiny amount of effort in trying to open it. Cycle through to the next step.

_Hold on. The door won't open just yet. First, tell me more about yourself._

"How about you fix me instead?" Emily asks.

_That's the problem with people like you. You have no perspective. I just turned you into a drop dead gorgeous woman with incredible physical ability and all you do is complain. Mneh, mneh, mneh... I even moved you past puberty, too, but do you appreciate it? No.  
_

"But it's not what I wanted," Emily says, "You forced it on me."

_You don't even know what you want. You complain about being lanky, but you're then unhappy that I gave you a full figure. You don't even know what men want from breasts as you complain that your larger than average C cups are too small. Your fashion sense fails as you think about yourself wearing barely anything at all and complain about the fetishy yet functional outfit I gave you._

"Well, you're not a woman," Emily complains, not entirely confident in her words but still needing to get this point across, "So you don't know what you're talking about."

_And what place do you have to complain, anyway? I'm sick of you little girls. You all want to be either essences of purity or Wonder Woman. You never think that maybe, just maybe, there's more to life than being strong and beautiful. You're the very first female assassin to go through my program and I had to 'force it on you'. Redesigns do nothing. I add religion to spur an atheist, they'll just convert. It sickens me enough to set this up like some video game, but I can't even make it work in our favor. I don't get why you were earmarked in the first place._

"What do you mean by that?" Emily asks, confused by the implications of 'redesign' and 'earmarked'.

_Nevermind that. I'm going to give you a gift so you'll shut up and cooperate._

A bright flash lights up the room from above, a bubble of radiance lingering around its source. The luminescent sphere of light descends, reforming itself into a roughly humanoid shape. The brightness starts to dim to reveal a tall, muscular, and incredibly attractive man wearing a toga. The term bishonen fails to describe him. He is the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last of the bishonen; the mold from which every other bishonen is cast. Every thought formerly running through Emily's brain gets crushed by perverse sexual lust for this paragon of masculine beauty in front of her.

_Oh, god, you humans disgust me. Take some steel wool to that filthy brain of your's._

Emily continues to stand there, a slackjaw expression of awe on her face. Who is this man and why can't she think of anything besides her desire for him?

"I... I..." Emily stutters as the man walks up to her, giving her a stern look. As he stops within less than a pace of her, she hangs forward with her mouth open and expecting. The man instead uses his right index finger to push her on her forehead, causing her to stumble lightly as a wave of euphoria goes through her.

_I hope I get fired for this. Now, be a good girl and walk through the door. And get yourself a change of underwear, you pervert._

"Yes, sir," Emily says, turning around and walking through the door. Light envelops her all at once, vision overwhelmed as a weightless feeling goes through her. Clearness of vision, clearness of sound, clearness of mind.


	5. Buy Stock in Sea Salt

**Begin crappy prose...**

**Wait for it...**

**...pad...**

**...now.**

* * *

When Emily comes back to her senses, she finds herself standing in an alley. It is a rather sparse area, with a couple wooden barrels and a crate. The ground is made of paved grey stonework, with wood buildings on either side of her painted white. At the end of the alley, she can see what appeared to be a street. Lots of people are walking around, going about their daily business. It is mid-day and it is beautiful outside, with nary a cloud in the sky.

As she starts to take a step forward, she stops as her foot nudges something. She looks down to find a large briefcase sitting there, a red tag attached to its handle. She picks it up and looks at the tag. All it says is 'Property of', with a blank field next to it. Without a pen to write with, Emily leaves it alone as she fiddles with the briefcase. Something in her mind told her that the combination is '747', with her rolling the numbers on the combination lock and careful pushing the latches to the side. The briefcase opens to reveal her knives and guns in their sheaths and holsters surrounded by a dozen magazines on one side and a disassembled sniper rifle with two magazines on the other.

Her mind returns to what had just happened. She remembered 'Awakening' from the games, but she always thought it was just a dream that Sora and Roxas had. She never thought that it was a tangible area and certainly didn't think that the narration was not only an actual 'person', but a rather sour one. It had to be an angel, since his presence alone had this gravitational effect to it. All she could do was think of how she wanted him to the exclusion of other thoughts. It was overpowering and it really scared her that she was so susceptible to it.

Emily closes the briefcase, instinctively and carefully setting up some mechanism on it. She starts walking out of the alleyway, coming out to a large courtyard with a ton of people walking around. It is a bit disconcerting at first because while she knows that this is Radiant Garden, she never saw so many people in it during the games. They are all walking through, with a fairly rough flow of foot traffic divided into lanes. She hears a ton of chattering, with the occasional indistinct shout emanating from a merchant down one of the roads.

Emily starts walking in a random direction with the traffic, unsure of what to do. She had always wanted to become part of the game, but she didn't know what she would actually do. Yet here she is, in a major city with no contacts, no transportation, and no home. What used to be her fantasy suddenly became a lonely, frightening experience. She holds back her tears, thinking hard on what she could do. In Kingdom Hearts II, Sora came here and met up with a couple Final Fantasy characters. They should still be living here somewhere, but the question is 'where?' The whole topology of the city is completely different, actually serving as more than just a few neighborhoods containing every plot relevant NPC and store.

The next street Emily walks down is an outdoor market. Lots of merchants hawking their wares, but nobody looked even vaguely familiar to Emily. Block after block, she tries to find anything that she could use as a frame of reference. A person, a store, a landmark, anything. Yet all she can see are anonymous looking people walking down repetitious streets and selling whatever crafts they have available. Emily sits down at a bench near a harbor, placing her briefcase next to her. Walking around wasn't doing her much good, so she decided her best chance at finding something familiar was by watching for somebody she'd recognize. People walk by, not paying much mind to the black clad girl on the bench as she scopes out every person that passes her field of vision.

Ten minutes of watching people turned up fruitless so far. It is really frustrating Emily. All she can see is a lot of dock workers carrying bags of fish from the harbor, vacationers taking pictures at the nearby historic building, kids playing tag while dribbling ice cream all over themselves, mothers carrying their babies along as they shop...

Wait, that's it! The ice cream! Emily had an epiphany, realizing that it was Scrooge, Donald's uncle, who sold ice cream in Kingdom Hearts II. It is a lead and Emily intended to take it. She walks up to a group of kids talking with each other.

"Hello," she starts, "Where did-"

"Ahhh! Stranger!" the kids all shout unanimously, running away in random directions.

"I just wanted to know..." Emily weakly shouts out, feeling dejected. She starts looking around to try to find somebody else she could question. She almost startles herself with her visual acuity, having been so used to her borderline near-sightedness all her life. She is able to just effortlessly scan the crowd, searching for ice cream in the hands of the people. It only takes her a few seconds before she spots a young couple walking together, talking and laughing with each other as they eat their ice cream bars. Emily walks up to them, careful not to look scary.

"Excuse me," Emily starts, "Where did you get those ice cream bars?"

"Are you trying to steal my boyfriend?" the girl asks, glaring daggers at Emily.

"No..." Emily responds.

"Because he's mine," the girl starts, hooking her arm around his and moving in close next to him, "And I'm not letting a tramp like you take him."

"I. Just. Want. Some. Ice. Cream." Emily spells out, giving an irritated expression.

"Oh," the girl responds, pointing towards a stairway, "The store is just up those stairs and down the block."

"Thank you," Emily responds, heading back to the bench as the two lovers continue their stroll. She picks up her briefcase and walks towards the stairs, a large ice cream shop coming within view as she finishes her ascent. She looks around, seeing a long line people all waiting to buy an ice cream bar as she attempts to find an anthropomorphic duck. All she can see are humans everywhere, cycling through the line to one of the three people serving bars of ice cream from the nearby freezers. Emily takes a position in the back of the line, watching for some clue that this is the right place. It takes a few minutes before she sees a three foot tall anthropomorphic duck wearing a blue tunic with red highlights, a top hat, and holding a cane with his right hand.

"Scrooge!" Emily shouts, forcing her way through the line towards him. He gives a look of mild shock, watching as the black clad woman nudges her way through the line. Emily was almost there when she sees a bright flash and feels a fist impact with her chin. As she stumbles and hits the ground, another bright flash goes by her eyes and she's back to pushing her way through the line. She instinctively leans backwards, a fist narrowly missing her. She sees a rather irate young punk girl attached to the fist, a livid expression directed at her. Emily casually shoves the punk girl down to the ground with both hands on her briefcase, continuing towards Scrooge. She stops within a few paces of him, with Scrooge taking a step back in surprise.

"I'm so glad I found somebody familiar," Emily starts, "I need your help."

"I dinnae ken who you are," Scrooge says, frowning at her, "But this racket is unacceptable."

"Please," Emily says, "You're Donald's uncle, right? I need to talk with him. Or Sora, Goofy, Mickey, Riku, Kairi..."

"What's going on?" a moderately high pitched feminine voice says. Emily turns around to see a fairly short pseudo-Asian woman. Her short black hair is accentuated by a long black headband with white edges. A black zipper vest over an elegant black T-shirt, dark blue short shorts, and goldish grey boots finish her outfit.

"This lass caused a racket by shovin' her way through the line," Scrooge explains.

"I'll handle this," the woman states, turning to Emily.

"Yuffie!" Emily says, "I need to talk with you."

"Miss, you're being disruptive," Yuffie states, "I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"But I need help," Emily responds, "Maybe I can I speak with Cloud, Leon, Tifa, Aerith-"

"Look, you're scaring me right now," Yuffie responds, "Stay away from me and my friends."

"But I need to talk with somebody," Emily starts, a bit surprised as Yuffie grabs her arm and starts dragging her away. Yuffie takes Emily a block away, ignoring her constant requests to talk with somebody, anybody, before stopping by a bell tower.

"I don't know who you are or why you know so much about us," Yuffie states, "But please, stay away from us."

"But... but..." Emily stutters, watching Yuffie walk off. She stands there for a minute, wondering why she got the cold shoulder. Yuffie always seemed so friendly in the games, but she doesn't seem to like Emily at all. Is there something wrong about Emily? Maybe the clothing looks bad?

Emily decides that her best bet is to follow Yuffie and hope she can single out somebody else. Maybe Tifa or Aerith will listen to her. With an inherent knowledge of stealth on her side, Emily starts stalking Yuffie. Yuffie continues her patrol, talking with the various store owners. Emily always did wonder what the "Hollow Bastion Restoration Committee" actually did and even watching Yuffie, she still has no clue. Yuffie didn't seem to do a whole lot but talk, writing down notes in a small notepad from time to time. After an hour and about one and a half miles of this later, Yuffie walks inside of a rather nondescript house. Emily could see the back of a brown haired guy through the window, which led her to believe that he is Leon and this is their shared home. At least she hopes that's still the case. Everything seems so different.

About half an hour later, Leon and a woman walk out the front door. The woman has dark brown hair going halfway down her back and dark red eyes. She's wearing a sleeveless black zipper vest and black knee length shorts with a very long cape-like strip of cloth going from the waist down to near the ground in the 180 degrees behind her. Tifa, of course. They walk down the street, heading towards the commercial district. Emily was about to follow when another person walks out the door. She's a relatively short woman, with long brown hair done in elaborate braids and green eyes. She's wearing a white and pinkish red gown, with a pink and white skirt that goes down to her shins. Aerith, of course. She turns around, locking the door before she starts walking down the street in the opposite direction of Leon and Yuffie. The obvious choice for Emily's contact, since there isn't a single mean thought going through her brain.

Emily starts following Aerith, careful to close distance without looking either threatening or hurried. With Emily about thirty meters behind, Aerith turns into an alleyway. Emily makes a silent dash to catch up, finding Aerith turning the corner into another part of the alley. Emily goes in to follow, a flash of light going by her eyes as she gets halfway through. She feels a blunt object hit her on the side, launching her into the wall and banging her head against it. Another flash later, her brain processes a hundred signals at once before she decides to do a back flip At the apex of her jump, she sees Leon swing his sheathed gunblade where Emily once stood. She lands behind him, instinctively holding the briefcase up to parry a vertical slice brought against her.

"Let me talk with you," Emily says, blocking a few more attacks with the briefcase. Leon isn't going to listen to her, so she eventually jumps over him while grabbing her two sheathed knives out of the briefcase. She takes a ready position in the four way intersection, with the briefcase slamming shut as it hits the ground and sliding behind her. Leon makes another rush, with Emily taking a defensive position and parrying each swing in a fairly perfunctory manner. Her hope is that if she continues to stall without making any active attempt to attack, Leon will eventually realize that she really does mean no harm.

Less than a minute of parries later, Emily sees Aerith come at her out of the corner of her eye. She's wielding a metallic quarterstaff, opening with a downwards vertical swing. Emily adopts a wider stance, using her right hand to parry the staff and her left hand to parry Leon's sheathed blade. They lock in position for a little, Leon and Aerith keeping a lot of downwards pressure on Emily's knives.

"Please listen," Emily says, desperately trying to communicate with them. Another flash goes by her eyes and she just barely registers Tifa coming from the side before a kick to the midsection sends her flying. Tifa continues running towards Emily, keeping her in the air with a few well placed upward punches before a crash into a stack of crates ends Emily's flight. Another flash brings Emily back to the present, with her registering Tifa incoming.

Emily decides that the best course of action is to leap onto a roof. She deflects the weapons to her sides, leaping just before they swipe inwards. Emily is caught off-guard when Tifa instead jumps up and kicks her, launching her. She gets underneath Emily and starts juggling her with upwards punches and shoulder bashes. She stops just before a pile of crates, letting Emily fall into them. A knock in the head takes her out of consciousness.


	6. Randomly Firing Synapses

It's a lazy, cloudy afternoon. The area around the bell tower is a bit sparse, with the populace all watching a Blitzball game at the stadium on the other side of town. There's a circular brick arrangement in the ground, a mural of a castle in the center. Two kids walk down the street, talking about the match as they look at a newspaper article. A familiar sixteen note melody emanates from the clock tower as they go by.

"Wakka is playing today!" one of them exclaims, excited, "He's my hero!"

"Even he can't stop the Radiant Raiders and their 4-2 defense," the other one responds. The bell tower has a short pause after the melody, following with two chimes.

"We're late!" the first one states.

"Race you to the hiding place!" the other one shouts, starting a sprint.

"Hey, no fair!" the first one says, running to catch up with him. A few minutes of non-activity go by before a boy in his mid-teens walks by. His vaguely blue tinted white hair clumps together in larger tendrils, with fairly long bangs barely staying away from his bluish green eyes. He's wearing white and yellow zipper jacket over a black zipper shirt and very baggy blue jeans. He stands there, searching for something.

"Hello, Riku," a cold, moderately low pitched voice says from out of view. The white haired teen looks around for the source, finding nothing. Eventually, about ten meters directly in front of Riku, a black raven lands. It gives a couple caws, making threatening gestures towards Riku. He draws a black and dark blue ornamental sword out of nowhere, taking a ready stance towards the raven.

"What do you want?" Riku yells out, searching around while keeping the raven within his peripheral vision. He seemed to be searching for somebody else. It doesn't take long before a relatively tall female figure walks around the corner of a nearby alley about 45 degrees to the left of the raven. While she has the basic form of a human, she definitely isn't one. She has yellow eyes and two large, black horns in place of hair. She's wearing a black outfit that covers all of her sickly looking skin except her face and hands. In her left hand, she holds a simple wooden scepter with a green orb at its top. Riku shifts his position towards the woman, keeping the raven in the corner of his eyes.

"You can't defeat the Heartless this way," the woman states, "It's futile. You know this."

"What do you suggest?" Riku starts, cynically, "You must be desperate to come to me."

"I have a new plan," the woman starts, holding her arm out for the raven to perch on as she walks up to it, "And I need your help to bring it to fruition."

"No," Riku responds, "Not again. Never again."

"You know it in your heart," the woman continues, "You need me, Riku."

"I won't let you use me again," Riku shouts, rushing towards the woman. As he slices at the woman, a puff of black smoke envelops her. His sword slices through the smoke harmlessly, leaving him searching for her.

"Imbecile," the woman's voice calls out, its source uncertain, "You should know better. Has being the pitiful lackey of the mouse reduced you to this? Pathetic."

"You're one to talk," Riku responds.

"I just need your keyblade," she states, "I'm giving you another chance: join me or I will forcibly remove it from you."

"I refuse," Riku responds.

"Pity," the woman says. A mass of small black creatures materialize from the ground. Riku effortlessly slices his way through them, an almost bored expression on his face. Suddenly, a giant black creature bursts a nearby house from the inside out, rising up from its crouch. It appears to be some type of tall, stringy bipedal creature. It has arms that go almost all the way down to the ground, giving it an almost ape-like stance. Every part of it appears to be a bundle of palm tree logs, seemingly tied together by some type of string. Its head appears as some type of significantly thicker cylinder with a face on the broad side, a purple jewel between the eyes. Palm leaves in some sickly brownish green color sprout from the top of its head, giving an umbrella type appearance to it.

Riku takes the initiative and runs to this creature, jumping up with his keyblade above his head. Suddenly, a beam of dark purple light emanates from the jewel in the forehead as it bends forward towards Riku. Riku stops in mid-air, held there by some force related to the beam. He writhes in pain as the keyblade hovers away from him, a stream of visible energy linking his hand to the blade. It gets thinner as the keyblade hovers away, a large flash of sparks emanating from both hand and blade as the stream of energy dissipates. Riku gives a loud yelp of pain, grabbing his burnt hand.

With Riku separated from the keyblade, the beam shuts off. He and the keyblade begin to fall down to the ground, with the raven intercepting and grabbing the keyblade. Riku hits the ground, a painful crack coming from his left leg. As he lies there holding back his spasms of pain, the creature clasps both hands together over its head and smashes downwards on Riku. A loud crunch echoes through the area as a white flash envelops everything.

--

"Come on, lazy bum, wake up," a high pitched voice says.

Emily starts to wake up, drenched in cold sweat. She is horrified by what she had just witnessed in her dream, finding the vividness of it downright disturbing. It takes her a bit to register her immediate surroundings as she opens her eyes. She's lying on some type of bed, obviously. It's a rather ordinary bed, made of wood and with simple cloth sheets. It doesn't take too long before she notices Yuffie staring right in her face.

"Hi, there," she says, smiling and waving, "Are you okay?"

"I guess," Emily states, forcing herself into a focus to best talk with Yuffie, "Why did you guys attack me?"

"Test of character," a disinterested male voice says from around the corner. Leon walks in, wearing a white shirt, a lion shaped medallion, black gloves, black leather pants, and a lot of dark red studded belts around his waist and wrists. He isn't wearing his trademark jacket, though.

"Test of character?!" Emily responds, "I just wanted to talk."

"By stalking me?" Yuffie asks.

"You wouldn't listen to me, so I had to do something," Emily responds, "How did you know I was stalking you?"

"I'm the great ninja Yuffie, silly," Yuffie answers, "You can't stalk a ninja."

"I'm sorry," Emily answers, "That was silly of me."

"You're dressed in an assassin's outfit," Leon starts, "Carrying one of the specialized briefcases. And you created a disturbance by Scrooge's ice cream store. Of course we were suspicious of you, but we found out that there's no way that you're here to kill any of us. You could have tried to snipe us through the window."

"Why didn't you just walk up to me?" Emily asks.

"Wanted to make sure you weren't trying something," Leon respond, "We now know that you either really don't want to hurt us or you're too incompetent to."

"What did you want to talk about, Miss...?" Yuffie asks.

"...Kiko," Emily starts, deciding to adopt her original character's name as a pseudonym. It's not like she's really, truly 'Emily' any more, "I need help. I got sent here after the Heartless destroyed my world. I went through some type of... place that gave me a new body with new abilities and dropped me in an alley in this town. I don't know what I should do now."

"That's strange," Leon remarks, "The Heartless haven't destroyed a world since The World That Never Was."

"It's true, though," Emily responds.

"Let's talk about it over lunch," Yuffie offers.

--

"...And that's how I ended up here," Emily finishes.

"Fascinating," Leon responds. Emily, Leon, Tifa, Yuffie, and Aerith are sitting around a simple wooden table. On the table is a place for every person, each with some rudimentary food on it. Not very glamorous, but it works.

"That's a sad story," Aerith responds, her face reflecting what she thought of it, "I'm sorry that happened to you, Kiko."

"It's fine," Emily continues, "Everyone hated me. I'm glad I'm not there any more."

"Even your parents?" Aerith asks, "They sounded nice."

"Especially my parents," Emily responds, taking a sip from her cup, "They mocked me constantly."

"That's so sad," Aerith consoles.

"If I may," Leon starts, "Your story is doubtful. You're claiming that we're an artificial creation?"

"That's what I originally thought," Emily continues, "But I guess it isn't fiction. Maybe Square-Enix has some way to monitor this universe? Turned it into a video game?"

"That's sort of scary," Yuffie starts, "People watching us all the time? Do they watch us in the bathroom?"

"No," Emily answers, "The games are rated T, so there's no nudity. I wouldn't worry about it too much. Anyway, can you help me?"

"We can't offer that much," Leon starts, "Radiant Garden has become overpopulated as of late. All the houses are already claimed and there's a long waiting list."

"We'd be happy to let you stay here for now," Aerith states.

"We'll talk later," Yuffie starts, "We're going to a Blitzball game. We'd take you along, but we don't have extra tickets."

"Blitzball?" Emily asks.

"Wakka sent us tickets," Leon starts, getting out of his chair, "Anyway, please stay here for now. There's a TV in the other room if you want to watch the game."

"We'll be back before you can say 'great ninja Yuffie'," Yuffie says, getting up.

"It's nice to meet you," Aerith says, getting up as well, "Again, I'm sorry I attacked you. It was uncalled for."

"Don't worry about it," Emily says, giving a weak smile, "I'm glad that you're helping me now."

"I'll see you tonight," Aerith says, giving a courteous bow and walking outside alongside Leon and Yuffie. Emily sits there, pondering on her dream she just had before this discussion. It couldn't be coincidence. Some kids talked about Wakka playing in a Blitzball game in her dream. She tried to remember if there was something that could have contributed to the dream. She always knew that dreams are just random synapses firing and something such as a Blitzball game with a star player obviously had to be something she heard of the day before. The realization that she had been unconscious for somewhere between 18 and 22 hours started to disturb her, though. Is she really so weak that she takes that long to recover from crashing into a stack of crates? The entity in 'Awakening' seemed to suggest that she'd be incredible, but she was so easily defeated. Did it lie to her? Emily then realizes that Tifa is still sitting at the table, having turned to face her.

"I'm sorry," Tifa says softly, getting up and walking outside.

It then came to Emily. She had a couple moments so far where she saw the immediate future. The person in the line, Leon's first attack, Tifa's attack. All had a bright flash, just like her dream. But it doesn't quite fit because all her visions so far involved her getting attacked. She wasn't anywhere near Riku, so why did she have a vision? Her point of view in the vision also made little sense. She seemed to just be standing in mid-air, looking at a downwards angle towards the square. It had to be a regular dream. There is no way she could have witnessed that event in the way it was portrayed. However, something nagged her. She was told to stay in the house and she didn't want to risk losing faith amongst her new friends. She literally has nowhere else she can go. But still, the possibility of Riku getting killed incensed her. She had to go to the clock tower and see what happens. If she's lucky, nothing will happen and she can rest easy.

Emily starts looking around the house, trying to find her briefcase. She already figured out that it had to be well hidden, given the suspicion leveled against her. Why would they allow someone as dangerous looking as her access to her weapons. She starts casually looking through the cabinets, trying to find the case. The house is pretty sparse, with just a simple arrangement of wooden furniture and a few closets full of clothing. The only noteworthy thing in the house is the large mainframe computer, with it currently turned off. Emily feels frustrated as she searches, unable to find anything. However, she realizes something as she looks inside one of the closets. Aerith has four ensemble outfits handing inside the closet, but it escaped Emily's notice that one of them is puffing out a bit more than the others. Emily walks up to it, unlacing it to find her briefcase held to the hanger by a small length of rope. Her two knives are held by the same length of rope, clipped in place. Emily takes the briefcase down, opens it, places the knives in, and walks out the front door.


	7. Hawaiian Shirt Day

Emily walks through the streets, her briefcase by her side. It is proving surprisingly easy for her to retrace her steps, with seemingly everything reminding her of everything else. She is surprised by her ability to recognize patterns. Just one glance down the street and she can tell which doors are most likely to be unlocked, which rooftops would be optimal monitoring and/or sniping spots, and the best escape paths. Just with the empty street, she can tell what the flow of traffic would be and what paths certain types of people would take. From any particular vantage point, she could tell what would be the best particular location for her target before firing. Her vision is dominated with vague lines, vague shapes with a correlation to vague concepts. Overwhelming on the senses.

Emily reaches the same clock tower courtyard as her vision. It's about a seven minutes before two o'clock and the courtyard is completely empty. A quick walk around analysis confirms that this is definitely the place, with even the same subtle cracks in the mural that Emily seemed to pick up. 20/10 vision is such an adjustment for her. Almost everything feels sharp to look at, with even tiny details such as warning labels on equipment being legible to her from a distance. It doesn't escape her notice that the clock tower's door is unlocked. The deadbeat maintenance staff probably assumed that nobody would care enough to enter. Not their lucky day, but at least Emily doesn't intend to steal or vandalize anything. She just needs a good vantage point.

She walks through the rather condensed interior full of cogs and gears, wooden stairs circling around the internal walls and emerging on the balcony near the bells above the clock faces. The balcony wall is just over a meter tall and made of stones of all colors, all of them fairly matte and dull. It's an imperfect barrier, with a couple holes. It forms a square within the partial octagon of the structure. There are four corner support beams holding the roof up, arranged as diagonals. The primary brass bell is quite large, taking up all the space over the empty part of the tower and going down to maybe half a meter over the walkway floor. Above the large bell on one side are a series of smaller bells hidden within the ceiling. The rest of the ceiling is occupied by a ton more gears and cogs, all hooked up to the various bells with one small rotating bar hooked up to the complex machinery below. Obviously an automated process.

Emily opens her case and starts gearing herself up. After clipping the knives, guns, and clips to their proper places, she starts assembling the rifle. It's a rather large gun, involving quite a bit of strength to put together. Just like a lot of things, Emily just knew instinctively in her muscle memory how to assemble it. With the gun set up, she places it down beside her and starts searching for a good hole in the barrier. It doesn't take long before she finds one with a perfect view of the mural. She gets a small startle as the bell tower starts its sixteen note chime, not expecting quite the volume it carried with her proximity. Two kids walk through the mural square, holding a newspaper article up. After the two chimes subside, Emily is able to hear their conversation.

"We're late!" one exclaims.

"Race you to the hiding place!" the other one shouts, starting to sprint as they reach the edge of Emily's view.

"Hey, no fair!" the other one shouts, also starting a sprint just as he exits Emily's view. There is no mistaking it now. Emily had a definite vision of the future in her dream and here she is, right in the thick of the action. Her pulse starts to quicken as she thinks of a plan. There's no turning back now. She just can't let her favorite character get effortlessly squished like an insect. But now, she has a bit of a dilemma. At what point should she enter? She's afforded a great view of Maleficent, but she already knows that it's a bit pointless to try to kill her. She's very good at escaping death, having been sworded in dragon form by Sora and still coming back. Apparently, her vague fate in Kingdom Hearts II when the Castle That Never Was crumbled turned out to be a non-issue as well. A bullet isn't going to do much, even with it coming from a huge gun. Instead, the best option is to shoot the large Heartless. The jewel on the forehead has to be a weak spot. If nothing else, at least shooting it out would interfere with its beam and prevent it from separating Riku from his keyblade.

A few tense minutes of plotting go by before a familiar white haired teen boy walks within her sight. Show time.

"Hello, Riku," a cold, moderately low pitched voice says from out of view. The white haired teen looks around for the source, finding nothing. Eventually, he fixates on something in front of him. A couple caws resonate from in front of Riku, inspiring him to draw a black and dark blue ornamental sword out of nowhere and take a ready stance.

"What do you want?" Riku yells out, searching around while keeping the area in front of him within his peripheral vision. Before long, he shifts his position a little to the left, fixating on the area there while maintaining his ready stance.

"You can't defeat the Heartless this way," Maleficent states, "It's futile. You know this."

"What do you suggest?" Riku starts, cynically, "You must be desperate to come to me."

"I have a new plan," Maleficent continues, still out of view, "And I need your help to bring it to fruition."

"No," Riku responds, "Not again. Never again."

"You know it in your heart," the woman continues, "You need me, Riku."

"I won't let you use me again," Riku shouts, rushing forward and out of view. The sound of an object cutting through the air is punctuated by a poofing sound. Emily puts her back to the barrier, picking up the rifle. There wasn't anything more for her to see visually and Maleficent's uncertain position in the rest of her earlier vision suggested that it wasn't in her best interest to look over the barrier yet.

"Imbecile," the woman's voice calls out, sounding just a bit too close for Emily's comfort, "You should know better. Has being the pitiful lackey of the mouse reduced you to this? Pathetic."

"You're one to talk," Riku responds.

"I just need your keyblade. I'm giving you another chance: join me or I will forcibly remove it from you." The edges of a cloak pass over Emily's view, sending her heart rate into overdrive. Maleficent is within less than a meter of her, apparently on the other side of the barrier. Emily starts thinking of what she should do. Is Maleficent not aware of her? Should she try to make the most of it and try to kill her? But her mind returns to the fact that Maleficent just refuses to die. Emily silently crouches in a bit closer to the barrier, hoping that she'll remain undetected.

"I refuse," Riku responds.

"Pity," Maleficent states. Emily nearly jumps when she feels two gentle pats on her head, barely restraining herself. "Good dog," Maleficent softly says downwards, just barely audible. Emily, a large amount of sweat dripping off her skin and her heart sounding like a rotary machine gun, instinctively grabs her right handgun and jumps onto her feet as she turns over the course of 0.8 seconds. Instead of Maleficent, she finds a small bit of black smoke dissipating where she once stood. Much too late. She sighs as she holsters the gun, placing her hand back on the sniper rifle and crouching down. She flips the bi-pod down, propping the rifle on the barrier and leveling it with the expected position of the large Heartless. With everything in place, she looks down to Riku, who has just finished his effortless half circle sweeps through the Shadows. Right on schedule, the nearby house bursts open to reveal the palm tree monster.

Emily starts watching through the scope, trying to pinpoint the jewel in its forehead. She hadn't thought to adjust the sight, so it is zoomed too far in. She could see the individual rivets in the skin of the Heartless, providing no frame of reference for where her rifle is pointed. She tries to adjust the sight, going a bit too far and ending up with it set to just barely zoomed past her natural sight. With the Heartless standing, she has little choice but to attempt to make a shot. She lines up the sight with the head, trying to adjust her aim to get to the jewel within her sight. As the Heartless starts to lean forward, time practically slows down as she nearly panics.

She fires the rifle, a loud, resonating bang traveling through the air as the minor recoil travels through her shoulder. Almost instantaneously, the jewel on the forehead splinters, quickly followed by an orange explosion enveloped by a burst of greenish purple energy. It staggers backwards, grasping at its gaping hole as greenish purple energy seeps out of it. Riku lands on the creatures chest, grabbing onto a notch and slashing through it. After a few of Riku's slices, the creature swats downwards and manages to bounce him away. Emily lines up another shot, firing into the gaping hope. The hole widens a little on one edge, a small orange explosion detonating within. It gives out a loud screeching sound, grasping at its forehead again.

A white flash goes by Emily's eyes. About two seconds later, the creature lashes at the top of the bell tower, effortlessly tearing off the whole structure from the balcony up. Emily gets caught in the structure, crashing into the ground with the rest of it. As she reels from the pain of several dozen broken bones, a splintered beam of wood impales her. Another white flash later, Emily already knows what to do.

Emily lets go of the rifle, dropping into a prone position and pushing her hands on the barrier. As she slides under the bell, she grabs onto a nearby cog and hangs there. Without any time to spare, the structure above her gets torn off. She hangs there as she hears the loud mixture of wood cracking and a couple bells resonating. As it hits the ground, the clamber of wood crashing interspersed with random bell clangs rings out through the area. Emily decides that now is as safe a time as any and kicks a nearby cog, forcing herself into a swinging flip and landing on top of what remains of the balcony. A feeling of distress goes over her as she searches for her rifle, not finding it anywhere. It must have been caught amongst the rest of the torn structure.

The creature clasps its hands over its head, turning towards the tower. Emily didn't need another precognitive vision to see what is coming. She makes a running jump off the side where Riku and the creature are about to spar, drawing her handguns and unloading at the creature's head. A loud crash of wood and metal resonates through the area as the creature crushes into the tower. Each of the bullets Emily fires deflects harmlessly off the skin of the creature's head, giving off small sparks. Emily lands on the ground, a huge shock going through her as she feels something snap in both of her legs. She lets out a loud yelp of pain, dropping her guns as she collapses to the ground and grabbing onto her legs. Amidst the pure agony, she starts to think of how weak she must be. That was barely even five stories and it fractured her legs like nothing. That angel must have been lying through his teeth about making her special.

As Emily lies there, Riku makes another leap towards the creature's head. With the creature still crushing into the remainder of the tower, it is unable to defend itself as Riku effortlessly slashes into its neck, a red beam of energy enveloped around and extending beyond his blade. As the creature's head topples off its neck, the whole creature starts dissolving into white sparks, bursting in a flash of white with a pinkish heart floating out of it towards the sky before fading away. As Emily's pain increases, she finds herself losing consciousness as it becomes too great to bear.


	8. Interdimensional Transfer Student

Emily regains consciousness with a sudden jolt of pain going through her right leg. She clenches her teeth, biting into some type cloth wrapped around a hard object. Her body starts spasming, held down by something.

"Please keep her still," a soft, feminine voice says as another jolt of pain travels through Emily's leg. Emily feels herself get pushed down harder into a hard and flat surface. Her eyes start to adjust, finding Leon and Yuffie pushing down in her shoulders. She looks towards her legs to see Aerith snapping them in place. After some more painful snaps, Aerith says something unintelligible and a green light goes over and through Emily. The pain goes from excruciating to non-existent over a tenth of a second, her legs slightly readjusting. Leon and Yuffie let go of her, walking out of the room fairly quickly. Emily looks around to find herself on the table in the kitchen, her pants lying in a corner. Humiliation and indignation starts flooding her immediately as the realization that she's down to her underwear comes to her.

"What are you doing?!" Emily shouts, curling up and covering herself as her face becomes a deep red.

"I'm sorry I had to do this without your permission," Aerith starts, turning her back, "But you were in shock when Riku called us. I couldn't cure you with your legs like that. I had to straighten the bones before I could heal you."

Emily starts to say something, but forces herself to calm down. She wants to say something to , too mortified to really do anything. She starts to wonder how long she had been out. From what she could see outside the nearby window, it hadn't been too long. The sun is still in the sky, still fairly high in the sky. Piecing together what Aerith said, her best guess is that Riku brought her directly to the house after the monster died. But then another question came up: why is everybody here when there was a Blitzball game going on?

"What happened to the Blitzball game?" Emily asks.

"We left early," Aerith explains, picking up the pants and tossing them over her shoulder towards Emily, "Riku said he brought you to a hospital, but nobody was there to take you. How did you know he was going to be attacked, anyway?"

"I saw it in a dream," Emily states flatly, sliding into her pants.

"A dream?" Aerith asks.

"Yeah," Emily answers, sliding off the table, "It's weird. I don't know. Where's Riku?"

"I wouldn't talk with him right now," Aerith starts, "He's sort of grouchy."

"Oh," Emily responds, dropping the topic. She figured out from her vision that something brought Riku there. He looked agitated, as though there was something forcing him to show up. But what?

"We're having dinner at a nice restaurant tonight," Aerith starts, "I got some clothing for you at the stadium. No offense, but you sort of stick out like a sore thumb in that outfit."

"Yeah," Emily responds, taking a quick gander at herself. As practical as the form fitting black mesh outfit no doubt is for night infiltration, camouflage in the shadows, and maneuverability, it does give off a bit of dismay. She looks as though she's either a predator or a pervert. Definitely need some new clothing.

"It's about 15:30, so we have some time," Aerith starts, "I'm sorry about taking your pants off. I didn't want to heal your bones wrong."

"It's okay," Emily says, "I'm sorry I snapped at you." Emily then walks across the room, through the hallway, and into the bathroom.

**--**

Emily walks out of the bathroom, adjusting herself to the new clothing. She's wearing a white T-shirt with the Radiant Raiders mascot logo on the front, a pair of blue jean shorts with the Radiant Raider logo on each leg, and a belt taken to the eighth notch holding the shorts up. The thought of being a walking endorsement for a sports team that she had never heard of bothered Emily a bit, but beggars can't be choosers, after all. Yuffie is standing near the corner of the hall as Emily comes out.

"Looking good, Kiko," Yuffie says, smiling and giving a thumbs up.

"Thank you," Emily responds, awkwardly.

"We're going to leave a bit early if that's okay," Yuffie says, walking over to Emily, "Leon wants to see the clock tower wreckage."

"Fine by me," Emily says, smiling.

"Okay!" Yuffie says, turning around and walking towards the door. Emily follows suit, going through the hallway and coming out near the front door. Standing by the door are Leon, Aerith, and Riku.

"Well, if it isn't the girl of the hour," Aerith says, smiling, "Riku was telling us how you helped him."

"Oh, it was nothing," Emily says, blushing and looking away, "I just caused more trouble."

"No, you were good," Leon states, "Riku says you shot the jewel out of its forehead."

"I broke my legs, though," Emily says, looking a bit sad, "I'm useless."

"That was really courageous of you, though," Aerith says, "I'm proud of you."

"Well, um... thank you," Emily says, going really quiet with the last two words and hanging her head down a bit. She isn't used to actually getting recognition from anybody. Sure, her parents would always tell her how they like her stuff, but they were always obviously lying.

"I heard the Raiders won," Yuffie says, sensing Emily's discomfort and changing the topic as she opens the door, "Go Raiders!"

"So the 4-2 defense isn't a myth?" Leon says, following behind. Leon and Yuffie talk about Blitzball as the group walks down the streets, the latter picking up most of the conversation. Emily doesn't really pay attention because she never really liked Final Fantasy X all that much. Too preachy. She hangs a bit behind the group, watching Riku. Riku looks fairly disinterested, as though these aren't really his friends. Emily knew from the games that Riku never met the Final Fantasy characters on-screen. However, this is some indeterminate amount of time later. Riku has obviously met them before (most likely through Sora), but he's giving off an aura of discomfort. There's obviously something else to this friendly visit.

Emily continues to watch Riku as she lags behind. She can't help but stare at his muscular frame, his slightly blue tinted white hair, his perfectly formed butt. She was always told by many readers on that her love for Riku goes much too far for a fictional character. That there's an unhealthy obsession underlying her stories. But here she is, right by the real life Riku and she feels more desire for him than ever before. She most definitely isn't a 'pixel lover' any more. Her mind wanders into the sort of fantasies that she wrote about for the online archive. She remembers the short story about Kiko's surprise birthday party she threw for Riku, complete with a very special gift once everybody else has left. She thinks back to the alternate universe where everybody is a teen in high school and Kiko had Sora, Roxas, Leon, Cloud, and Demyx all fighting for her affection, but she just wanted Riku, the loner who never knew love until he met Kiko.

After a few minutes, she catches herself going a bit too far with her physical reactions to her imagination and stops. She does a quick check out of embarrassment to see if anybody saw her, but everybody else is still talking about the Blitzball game they didn't get to watch. After another minute of walking, they come across a pile of collapsed wood, stone, and brass cogs with a police line around it. A couple people wearing uniforms stand there as a crew of people sift through the wreckage. A nearby table has a couple bells, a briefcase, and a large sniper rifle on it.

"Hello, Leon," one of the uniformed men starts, giving a salute.

"Hello, Chief," Leon says, reciprocating the salute as he walks forward to them, "You wanted to talk to me?"

"Yes," the chief starts, "We found this illegal military grade sniper rifle here with explosive armor piercing rounds. What do you know about it?"

"It's Radiant Garden Security property," Leon says. Emily was about to say something, but stops herself when the term 'illegal' set in.

"We talked with the Security branch," the chief continues, "They have no clue what it is."

"Did you talk with sector nine?" Leon says, walking towards the table.

"Oh," the chief responds, "Sorry about that. Carry on." Leon grabs the rifle and briefcase, walking back to the rest of the group.

"Here you go, Kiko," Leon says to Emily, softly, as he hands the items to her, "Might want to put it away."

"Um... thanks," Emily responds, also softly. As the group continues walking to the restaurant, Emily deconstructs and puts away the large gun. Just as she snaps the briefcase shut, Leon takes it out of her hands.

"I'm going to have to confiscate this," Leon starts, "Sorry, Kiko. We'll talk about this at dinner."

"Okay," Emily says, not really caring. To her, these weapons are a curse just like her old outfit is. They distance her from everybody else, giving a sense of danger. What person wants to hang around somebody with a gun like this?

**--**

After about ten more minutes, the group walk inside a fairly nice restaurant. It's not a formal dress place, but it certainly doesn't have anybody that isn't rich. All the tables are circular or ovular in shape, with white table cloth, sterling silver utensils, fancy china plates, and thin glasses containing yellowish sparkling liquid. Men and women dressed in formal suits and dresses walk around taking orders and delivering food. Amidst the sound of the usual chatter is a weird type of chamber music, using the classical instruments but giving a weird sort of vibe. A man standing behind a podium turns to face Leon as the group walks in.

"Welcome back, Mr. Leonhart," the man states, "The usual?"

"Yes, please," Leon responds.

"Okay," the man responds, pulling out a few menus and walking around the podium. He leads the group to a table near a window, already adorned with a tablecloth and five places. He places a menu at each one as Riku sits down, everybody else still standing. The man then goes back to his podium to await the next guests to the restaurant.

"Well," Leon starts, turning to face everybody, "I'm going to go to the bathroom."

"Me, too," Yuffie says, walking alongside Leon as he starts heading towards the bathroom. Aerith follows behind without a word. With everybody else gone, Emily finds herself alone with Riku. She is presented with the opportunity she always dreamed of. The incredibly hot, attractive, dark Riku is here, in a situation where she can introduce herself.

"Hi, there," Emily says, smiling and waving to Riku as she sits down next to him.

"Hello," Riku responds, looking a bit apprehensive. Emily, holding back her blush, scoots in a bit closer to Riku. She so very desperately wants to make a good impression. She wants Riku as her boyfriend more than ever and nothing is going to stop her. She sits there for a short bit, unable to think of anything to say. She's overwhelmed by emotion, unable to think straight as her mind wanders to the feeling on warmth going through her body and converging between her legs. Within her brain rages a war between the sensible, intellectual part that tells her that she is giving off a lot of wrong signals and the animal part that just wants to strip Riku down and have her way with him.

"Er... your name?" Riku says, looking a bit discomforted at Emily's unblinking gaze.

"Oh, sorry," Emily apologizes, looking down with embarrassment at what she must have unknowingly communicated, "I'm Kiko."

"Kiko, huh?" Riku says, looking at Emily a bit more closely as she stares into the plate in front of Riku.

"It's nice to meet you," Emily says softly, tilting her head up a bit to look just under Riku's head. As she sits there, she feels conflicted feelings swarm through her. Why does Riku look discomforted? Is he also shy? Or maybe Emily doesn't look good enough? She starts to curse the fact that she's forced to wear this sporty apparel. A T-shirt with a sports logo is hardly something a guy like Riku would find attractive. She wishes she could just stop blushing. No matter how hard she fights it, her brain keeps derailing into lust for Riku. She fights her body as she starts finding herself unconsciously trying to move closer to Riku, the heat cascading through her feeling like its only source of relief is within Riku's arms.

"If I may be so bold, Kiko," Riku starts, a bit of cynicism in his voice, "Are you coming on to me?"

"Am I... oh, no, I'm not..." Emily starts stuttering, unable to form a comprehensive thought as she looks away, "I just... I... um... I think... we... you... I... we should... go... sometime... out... in... excuse me," Emily finishes, quickly getting up and briskly walking towards the bathroom. She keeps her head down, trying to mask the luminescent blush that felt hot to the touch. She passes by Leon and company as they walk away from the bathrooms, going straight inside the woman's bathroom and locking the door shut before they can even ask her anything.

**--**

Emily walks out of the bathroom about ten minutes later, quite a bit calmer and more relaxed. Impressive how effective splashing cold water on her face, hyperventilating, and other activities are in relieving tension. She weaves through the walkways, careful not to touch any of the chairs. It's always sort of bothersome to come to restaurants with condensed seating like this. People like to sit a bit further away from their tables than planned, setting up minor obstacles. After deftly avoiding one person that backed his seat away from his table without looking, she reaches her table. In clockwise order, the table is organized with Leon, an empty seat, Yuffie, Riku, and Aerith. Leon turns to Emily.

"Welcome back, Kiko," Leon says, pulling out the chair to his left.

"Thank you," Emily says, sitting down beside Leon. Riku gives Emily a bit of a disapproving look before turning back to listen to Yuffie. Yuffie sure is spirited about Blitzball, going on and on about it. Aerith and Riku just listen politely, nodding their heads from time to time. Leon stares at his plate, bored. A waitress goes by and gets their orders, apparently having waited until everybody is sitting at the table before starting. Emily orders a random soft drink from the unfamiliar menu along with an unfamiliar meat item. Emily decides to try talking to Leon in order to distract herself from her still lingering feelings towards Riku.

"Earlier, what did you mean by sector nine?" Emily asks, turning to face Leon.

"It's an unofficial branch of the Security force," Leon explains, "Very hush hush. Speaking of which..." Leon plinks his fork against his glass a few times, getting everybody's attention, "Now that we're all here, I think we should talk about Kiko. Riku, could you explain what your plans are?"

"Oh, you can explain better than I can," Riku says.

"You know better than us, though," Leon responds, "You went to the summer orientation."

"Oh, all right," Riku concedes, "I'm going to the Radiant Garden Academy for Exceptional People. It's a boarding school."

"You're going to high sch-?" Emily starts to ask.

"No, I'm going to an academy," Riku interrupts, looking a bit irritated, "Anyway, could you explain where they come from, Leon?"

"Sure," Leon says, turning to face Emily, "After the Organization XIII crisis, King Mickey offered to start up a school using Ansem's abandoned castle. He spent the past six months converting the interior and getting a couple additions built. Now, he has three dozen faculty members and an opening class of 200 people age 14-18."

"We're going to learn how to fight," Riku continues, "Sora and I enrolled because it will help get the school going."

"That sounds like fun," Emily says, "And a bit familiar. I wish I could go."

"That's what we wanted to talk to you about," Aerith says, "We got you enrolled."

"...what?" Emily asks, a bit shocked and confused.

"You put us in a hard position," Leon starts, "The city wants to arrest you. We've been vouching for you, but with no plausible explanation why you're here, they won't continue to buy it. Your choices are to either enroll at this school or go to prison."

"Of course I'll join this school," Emily starts, her face lightening up, "It sounds like so much fun. I bet there are a ton of secret passageways containing mysterious monsters and treasure."

"Actually," Leon starts, "The three of us and Cid helped clean the castle of everything. There isn't a single secret left to surprise us."

"Aww," Emily says, a bit disappointed.

"So, are you in?" Leon asks.

"Of course!" Emily says, excitedly. Life just couldn't be better now that she's able to try and court Riku while going to superhero school. As everybody resumes their normal conversation, she starts imagining all the cool stuff that's sure to come up. As she eats her unfamiliar but fairly decent meal, she imagines herself learning to cast magic. She imagines herself with Riku, exploring the castle depths and fighting the Heartless to save the school. She imagines secret meetings with Riku in the tower, where they will just have oh so much fun...

"Kiko?" Leon says to her. Emily is brought back to reality when she realizes that everybody is about ready to go home for the night.

"Oh, sorry," Emily says, "I'm just so excited."

"You can stay with us for tonight," Aerith offers, "We'll get you some more clothing tomorrow morning before you go to school."

"Thank you," Emily says. With that, everybody gets up and departs from the restaurant. Emily walks alongside the group, staying on the opposite side away from Riku. She's convinced that she made a bad impression on Riku. She doesn't think she completely destroyed her chances, but it's going to be quite a bit more difficult now. Riku doesn't seem to really care, instead just acting passive towards her. He's just so passive, not really acting so much as reacting. She never really noticed that aspect of his personality before, just sort of fantasizing about how so very dark and handsome he is. After about ten minutes of Emily excitedly imagining more about her upcoming life, the group arrives back at the house.

"Well," Leon says, "Here we are. It was nice to see you, Riku."

"Thank you," Riku says.

"Tell Sora I said hi," Yuffie says, smiling towards Riku.

"Sure thing," Riku responds.

"Good night, Riku," Aerith says, "I always enjoy when you come by."

"Good night," Riku says to everybody as they walk inside. Emily lags a little behind, unable to come up with something to say to Riku as she stood there for a few seconds. She decides that it's probably best to leave Riku alone for now.

"Um, Kiko?" Riku says as Emily starts to walk in through the door.

"Yeah?" Emily asks sheepishly, turning around.

"I'm... sorry... about what I said in the restaurant," Riku says, looking a bit uncomfortable as the words come out of his mouth.

"It's okay," Emily says, "I'm sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable."

"I'll see you in basic training tomorrow," Riku says, "Good night."


	9. This Seems Awfully Familiar

It's a beautiful, sunny day in Hometown, USA. An ideal day to go outside and do any number of activities such as kite flying, soccer, or building a treehouse. However, there's one girl not taking advantage of this beautiful day. A blonde haired girl has locked herself in her room, sobbing into her black pillow with some water dripping onto the dark purple bed spread. Across from her bed is a dresser, with various hair dyes, combs, and mirrors lying on top of it. The only light in the room emanates from a computer, the screen set with a couple Firefox browsers on news sites with a constant Refresh plug-in. Some knocking comes from the door.

"Go away," the girl shouts, sobbing a bit harder.

"Jamie," a woman on the other side, "Please don't be this way."

"How can you be so calm?" Jamie responds, "Emily is probably dead now."

"You shouldn't think that," the woman says.

"What should I think?" Jamie asks, "Dr. Murder escaped custody during transit near our town. He was spotted heading towards Emily's neighborhood around when she was heading home. Her bag was found lying on the sidewalk. She's probably dead now."

"The police caught Dr. Murder," the woman says, "Please let me in."

Jamie ceases sobbing as she hears those words. She rolls out of bed and walks over to the computer, finding that one of the local news websites has the capture of Dr. Murder as a breaking story. The article itself is relatively sparse, promising more details as the police release them. She walks over to the door, unlocking it and letting the woman in. They look at each other for a minute before they embrace each other, Jamie resuming her sobbing as she burrows her head into the woman's shoulder.

"It's okay, Jamie," the woman says, patting her on the back.

"The website said the police haven't released any details yet," Jamie starts, "They must be trying to think of a way to phrase Emily's death."

"Detective Williams called Mrs. Tennenbaum earlier today," the woman starts, "The police couldn't find any evidence that the Strangler kidnapped anybody, let alone Emily."

"You're sure?" Jamie says, lightening up on her sobs.

"Positive," the woman continues, "Emily probably ran away. You said she had a really bad day and was even yelling at you over the phone."

"She wouldn't leave her bag behind like that," Jamie says.

"Please," the woman says, stroking Jamie's head gently, "You need to be strong."

"Why don't the police put out an AMBER Alert on her?" Jamie asks, sniffling.

"The police can't call an AMBER Alert on every missing child," the woman starts, "Not without evidence. Don't worry, I'm sure Emily is fine. She'll probably be picked up by the police when she gets to a major city."

"I'm just so scared," Jamie says, crying some more.

"It will be okay," the woman says. A bright white flash envelops them, overloading the senses and draining all color from the area.

--

Emily starts to wake up, the dream haunting her as she slowly gains consciousness. It definitely has to be a dream, since she watched the Heartless completely destroy her world. Still, she can't help but feel pangs of guilt at the possibility that her friend is distraught at her disappearance. Must be another cruel joke her brain is playing on her. After getting clothed in the same outfit as yesterday, Emily walks out of the room to find Aerith waiting for her.

"Good morning, Kiko," Aerith says, smiling.

"Good morning," Emily responds, wiping some more sleep out of her eyes.

"Are you okay?" Aerith asks, looking concerned, "You seem troubled."

"Oh... no, it's fine," Emily answers, "I just had a bad dream."

"Okay," Aerith says, "If you want to talk about it, I'm here for you."

"Thank you," Emily says, a bit relieved. She doesn't want to alarm Aerith with her creepy dreams of the old world.

"Shall we?" Aerith asks, "We can get breakfast at the mall."

"There's a mall?" Emily asks.

"As of last month, there is," Aerith responds, walking towards the door. Emily follows right behind, excited to see what shopping in Radiant Garden is like.

--

As it turns out, the Radiant Garden Mall is everything Emily expected it to be. Sure, none of her favorite stores such as Forever 21 or Hot Topic are present for obvious reasons, but she was still able to get some good stuff. She now owns a couple pairs of blue jean pants, a bunch of T-shirts with various designs, some underwear, a pair of sneakers, and some luggage to carry it all in. More than enough. Emily doesn't like that Aerith bought all of it for her, but with no money of her own, she didn't have much choice.

Emily and Aerith, both carrying two suitcases each, are now in the decently crowded courtyard of the castle. The castle itself looks largely the same, but all the Heartless imagery has been removed and most of the collapsed parts have been sealed up. Twisting marble spires and elegant brass cage elevators are the order of the day, providing no real symmetry. The area around the castle has been largely renovated, with a greenhouse, a hedge maze, and a landing pad for space ships. There are still one or two space ships sitting on the landing pad, the last of its passengers gathering together to be led to the main courtyard. Riku comes up by their side from behind, carrying a large black binder emblazoned with a logo of a castle and a clipboard.

"Hello, Aerith, Kiko," he says, getting their attention.

"Oh, hi, Riku," Aerith says, a little startled. Emily, still a bit mortified by her actions of the previous night, shies away from him by moving in a little closer to Aerith.

"Um, Kiko," Riku says, bending a little to see around Aerith , "I brought your orientation materials. Also, there's a form you have to fill out."

"...a form?" Emily asks, working up enough confidence to speak to Riku.

"Yeah," Riku says.

"My hands are a bit full, though," Emily says, holding her suitcases up a little.

"Oh, yeah," Riku says, making a waving motion towards something near the crowd. A medium sized robot hovers over fairly briskly, stopping about three meters away from the group. It's done in an ovular design and made of brass plate with various exposed cogs on its top, grinding away in a clockwork fashion. A large, circular extrusion on its bottom emits a soft blue jet flame, four smaller tubes emitting smaller yellow flames at each corner. Four spindly appendages emerge from the center of the back, with three joints and ending in a six digit talon. Three lenses act as eyes, an orange pinpoint light emanating from the largest one.

"What is this?" Emily asks.

"Service robot," Riku answers, opening the black binder, "Place your bags down and step back."

"Okay," Emily replies, placing her suitcases down. Aerith does as well, both of them stepping back. Riku holds the book in front of the robot's eyes, the orange pinpoint darting back and forth rapidly for a second. It gives a couple clicks as it finishes, spinning its appendages to face forward. It grabs the four suitcases, spinning the arms to its sides after it has them secure. The machine then gives off a larger jet flare as it starts hovering upwards, heading towards one of the towers.

"That's pretty cool," Emily remarks, watching it fly away.

"I hope you're ready," Riku starts, "This isn't going to be like a normal school. It will be very hard."

"Oh, that's fine," Emily says, "I'm so excited. I'm going to learn to be a hero!"

"You might want to fill out the clipboard now," Riku says, handing the book and clipboard to Emily.

"Oh," Emily replies, taking a quick glance at the form on the clipboard.

"Well," Aerith starts, "I'm going to head off now. If you need anything, just call me."

"Okay," Emily says, turning to face Aerith, "Thank you for all your help."

"Thank you," Riku says.

"I hope you'll stop by and visit sometime," Aerith says, "Best of luck with school. See you later."

"See you later," Emily and Riku both respond. With that, Aerith walks back through the gate, heading back to the main town.

"Shall we?" Riku asks, motioning towards the crowd of people, "King Mickey is going to give a speech."

"Okay," Emily says, following behind Riku as she starts perusing the form on the clipboard. The first line is just simply 'Name'. That's fairly effortless. She writes in 'Kiko', deciding against finishing with 'Fluffy Pants' due to her realization that it's an absurd last name.

"Kiko," Riku says, giving her a minor jolt.

"Wha?" Emily responds, looking up.

"The speech is about to start," Riku says, pointing at a podium on a wooden stage at the far end of the courtyard.

"Oh," Emily responds, looking at the stage. There are two dozen chairs arranged in a single row, each with a teacher on them. There is a small gap in the chairs in the middle, no doubt to prevent any of them from being blocked by the podium. None of the people really stand out to Emily. She imagined there being some motley crew of misfits, each with appearances just as animated as their personality. Instead, she just sees some nondescript people in fairly standard formal outfits. A brown haired woman with a pale green dress, a man with a crew cut wearing a green military uniform, a man with glasses and a business suit, so on and so forth. It almost bothers her how these people could be substitute teachers at her school in the old world. King Mickey walks up on the stage carrying a stool, placing it down behind the podium and standing on top of it.

"Hello, everybody, and welcome to the opening semester of the Radiant Garden Academy for Exceptional People. I hope your flights here have been pleasant. Now, as you all know, the focus of the Academy is to train you all for a role in fighting the Heartless. While they currently lie in hibernation with only a couple rogue packets occasionally being commandeered, we want to have people that can fight them once they emerge again. As we have found out, their success in destroying worlds comes from the lack of opposition they face. While there have been champions to fight them for as long as they have existed, they are overwhelmed with each emergence. The mythical keyblades might seek out the best wielders, but they are a very small number of people pitted against a universal threat with numbers estimating in the trillions."

"So, I have gathered you all together. Each and every one of you has gone over the program outline and accepted both the full responsibility that signing up holds and also the potential danger involved. Because of the harshness of this program, I limited my original pool to little over a thousand people spread across two hundred worlds. I based potential recruits on their potential in the fields of reflex, tactical awareness, and endurance. Most importantly, though, I based it on the strength in your hearts. Each and every one of you here is pure of heart and resistant of the darkness."

"More than 800 people declined to join. Whether it be due to current obligations or a lack of desire to leave their worlds, I fully respect their choice. And while I'm confident in each and every one of you, I still have to estimate that only half of you will ultimately graduate. Those of you who do make it through, however, will be seasoned veterans capable of acting within any difficult combat situation. The Heartless were sealed away twice with only six active people. _Six_. And even then, most of the work fell upon two people. If two people could stop the Heartless, imagine what 200 could do."

"As much as I would like to be your headmaster, I have obligations to attend to on my world. As I promise in the course materials, I will talk with each of you personally at least once by the end of this year. The acting headmaster will be Jared Kilpatrick, an accomplished military general of over 40 years. Please give him a hand."

As Mickey finishes the seemingly improvised speech, he hops off the stool and pushes it into the space in between the chairs. A man of about age 60, balding and wrinkled but still in a good physical condition, walks up to the podium. Emily figures that with such an ugly, boring headmaster, she can just take this opportunity to fill out the form. After some usual things such as gender and age, she comes up to the first real question.

What weapons can you use? Also include any unarmed combat styles you know.

Emily doesn't have to think about this for long. Dual knives, dual pistols, and sniper rifles.

What weapons would you like to use?

Emily thinks about this for a minute. She wants to use the keyblade, but they aren't just giving them out at the local convenience store. Swords just aren't the same and an exotic weapon doesn't really offer that much. She comes to the conclusion that for all intents and purposes, she'll be fine with her current proficiencies.

Please list your physical skills:

This is a bit of a toughie for her. She was given the vague description of being an excellent assassin, but she doesn't know what that means. She has incredible dexterity, but what skills does it apply to? All she knows is that she can instinctively put together and take apart her sniper rifle while also being able to maneuver her way around the briefcase. She writes down 'I don't know', describes what she has been able to do so far, and leaves it at that.

Please list your mental skills:

She thinks on this for a little. While she thinks she's a good writer, she remembers that this is a military school. She thinks about how she's able to effortlessly size up any area and situation, describing it as vividly as possible.

Please list your social skills:

Emily just writes down 'none' and leaves it as is.

Please list your magical/psionic skills/affinities:

Emily stumbles on the word 'psionic' for a minute before she remembers back to her short Dungeons and Dragons stint. She doesn't understand why it doesn't say 'psychic', but whatever. She writes down her precognitive abilities, describing how she has no control over them.

Please list your weaknesses. For security reasons, list ONLY the ones that you can eventually overcome. DO NOT list any Achilles' Heels that you have no chance of overcoming:

Emily thinks long and hard on this one. She hates how she's so shy and socially retarded, but is it a weakness that they would take seriously? She decides that there's no harm writing it down. She then thinks back to her problems with the palm tree monster. She got way too excited and didn't act rationally when Maleficent touched her. She didn't acquire a clear shot as fast as she should have. She completely ignored the possibility of jumping to one of the nearby buildings or possibly sliding down one of the sides. She broke her legs after only five stories, which would be a light sentence in her old world but goes against everything she saw in the video games. She writes all this down, adding in some other minor details as well.

On the next page, she doesn't find any more of the form but instead, a page with a lot of cryptic symbols. They're dark red and in really small print, filling the whole page. They're unlike anything she has ever seen before. There aren't any other pages on the clipboard, prompting her to put it away.

"...and that is how I will handle my classes," the small, dull woman with thick bottle glasses standing at the podium finishes, "Without further ado, here's King Mickey."

"Thank you," King Mickey says, barely heard over the P.A. system as the woman bows to him. He bows as well, grabbing the stool and placing it behind the podium as she walks back to her chair. He resumes his speech, "Now that you've met the faculty, it's time we start our basic training. Please find the robot holding your group flag and show it your card. Welcome to the Radiant Garden Academy!"

"Um, Riku?" Emily starts, a look of befuddlement on her face.

"Yeah?" Riku responds, turning to face her.

"I don't know what to do," Emily says, skipping to the chase.

"Oh," Riku says, "Here, let me have that clipboard." Emily hands the clipboard over to Riku, who turns and gives a wave to one of the robots. It zips over, stopping three meters in front of them. Riku holds the clipboard up with the page of cryptic markings in front of the robot, his thumb over one of the symbols. It scans the page, clicking a few times and grabbing the clipboard. It then flies up towards one of the castle spires.

"How does that work, anyway?" Emily asks as Riku starts leading her to a small crowd.

"Oh, it's very complex," Riku starts, "In order to minimize potential subversions of the robots, they're all designed with relatively simple base programs. They have to scan one of these pages to be able to do much of anything. Pages like the one you just saw contain a whole program, the code etched into those symbols. The scanning process pays attention to the code, the shape of the symbols, and small color tints. You also have to hold your thumb over the symbol that matches up with the robot's. If there are any major inconsistencies in the code, the robot will automatically deactivate after sending a beacon signal to the main office."

"That sounds so unnecessary," Emily remarks.

"Anyway," Riku starts, "You have a card in the front of that binder. Take it out and no matter what, do not lose it. You need it to open doors and use the elevators in the castle."

"Which group am I in?" Emily asks.

"Same one as me, Kiko," Riku says, "I got Leon to set it up so we'd be in the same group."

"Thank you!" Emily says, now more excited than ever.

"Anyway, basic training time," Riku says as they stop by a robot, holding his card in front of him. Emily follows suit, with the robot scanning both of their cards. With 40 people standing around the robot, it proceeds to make a couple clicks and start hovering towards one of the castle entrances, with everybody following behind.


	10. Now Featuring R Lee Ermey

The group finish walking through the main floor and go inside a room on the second floor. The room is a fairly nondescript but tall room, with two beige blank walls, one beige wall with a door, and a beige wall with everything from two meters up being a series of window panes. The windows are on the right as one enters the room, the light giving everybody a bit of a long shadow. The floor is made of buffed wood, with the beige ceiling six meters above. As the last member of the group enters, the robot exits the room.

"This is it?" Emily asks to Riku.

"Yes," Riku says, turning to face Emily.

"Shouldn't there be training equipment and stuff?" Emily asks, doing another check of the room to make sure she didn't miss anything.

"This is just an introduction," Riku explains, "By the way, since I know you didn't read the book, I need to tell you to not talk back to him. He will be very abrasive and get right in your face, but you need to put up with it."

"Oh, so it's like those war movies?" Emily asks.

"Probably," Riku starts, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh," Emily says, "Nevermind."

"You should take this opportunity to meet people," Riku suggests.

"Okay," Emily responds. She starts looking around the room, sizing up all the people. In one corner of the room, three boys that seem to be brothers are talking with each other. Brown hair, slim builds, boring. Near them are a couple more boring people. Brown hair, blonde hair, boy, girl. She doesn't see a point in trying to meet anybody boring. As she turns her head, her eyes are immediately drawn to a girl of about 4'10". She is of a very slim build, her arms and legs thin and spindly. She's wearing a one piece fuchsia silk dress, sleeveless and shoeless. Her bright pink hair is done in a raised ponytail, draping down to about shoulder length. But it's not all this that draws Emily in, though. She has a pair of purple, twisting antennae of about 20 centimeters long sprouting from her forehead, ending in curls. There's also some type of thin, pink, translucent cape-like structure originating from her back. Two sections are draped over her arms, another two hanging behind her and ending around shin level. Now this is somebody worthy of being Emily's friend. Emily walks up to her, giving her best idea of a friendly appearance.

"Hello," Emily says, smiling and waving.

"...oh, hello," she says, breaking her blank stare and looking to Emily with her pink eyes. She looks a bit intimidated being addressed directly like this.

"I'm Kiko," Emily says.

"Oh... um..." the girl says, looking down and away as she softens her voice quite a bit, "...I'm Chou."

"Nice to meet you, Chou," Emily says, holding her hand out. Chou steps back a bit, hunching and looking away. "What's wrong?" Emily asks.

"What do you want from me?" Chou says, a bit of fear in her voice.

"I just want to be your friend," Emily says, "You seem like an interesting person, unlike all these boring people around us. I'm sorry if I offended you."

"It's not that," Chou says, "I'm just so intimidated. Everybody is so big. And you're bigger than the other girls."

"Yeah," Emily says, "I can't really help that."

"No, you're okay," Chou says, "I'm sorry."

"Don't wor-" Emily starts, getting cut off as the door slams open. A man in his late thirties of about 5'10" wearing a military outfit with a crew cut and a mean expression walks in, batting his hand with a riding crop.

"All right, maggots!" he says, very loudly and in charge, "Line up! Two lines, each side facing center, 20 people each! Move, move, MOVE!" As he said that, the room goes into a bit of chaos as people start arranging themselves in lines. About twenty seconds later, there are two lines of people. Emily, having been caught off-guard, didn't get a chance to move next to Riku like she wanted. She instead has to settle with being one person away from the door, standing to the right of Chou with Riku directly across from her. As the last person gets in place, the man resumes speaking.

"That was pitiful!" he shouts, "Eighteen seconds too slow! What are you maggots doing, frolicking around?"

"Well, si-" one boy starts.

"Did I tell you to speak?!" the man shouts.

"No, si-" the boy starts to reply, getting cut off.

"Now," the drill sergeant says, walking down the line as he lightly smacks people with his crop to get them to straighten their posture, "My name is Drill Sergeant Williams. You pukes may also know me as Master Williams, 4th Dan of the Shadow Fist style. However, my name to you is 'Sir' and every sentence that comes out of those slack jaws of yours' will begin and end with my name. Is that clear?!"

"Sir, yes, sir," a couple people familiar with this style of training say, largely unsynchronized. Everybody else just continues to stand there, staring forward blankly.

"You miserable little leeches are already beyond hope!" he shouts, settling on a position at one end of the lines, facing down the center, "When I ask you a question, you sound off like you've got a pair. Is that clear?"

"Sir, yes, sir!" nearly everybody shouts, a bit more synchronized.

"Not good enough!" the sergeant shouts, "Again!"

"Sir, yes, sir!" everybody shouts, synchronized.

"That's what I'm looking for!" the sergeant responds, "Now, I see some of you came wearing whatever fell out of the closet this morning. I know that the administration promised you an open dress code and despite my protests, that's what they are giving you. You might want to show up in clothing you can fight in and won't mind getting torn to pieces as the Heartless tear you a new one. However, know that I don't care what else the pansy ass administration promised when they recruited you. For all I care, they promised you candy canes and puppies. But guess what? That's not what you're going to get!"

"My job here is to break you. I will shatter you. I will stick you in a blender and press 'liquefy'! And with the base components I salvage from the stain you leave behind, I will rebuild you. And when I am finished with you, you will be badasses! But until that day, you are worthless! You are stains of dog puke soaking into my carpet! But if anybody wishes to prove otherwise and graduate from my class early, all they have to do is challenge me to an unarmed duel and win! But I already know that you candy ass pieces of excrement would buckle under a gust of wind, so don't even delude yourselves!"

"Some of you might already know how to use a weapon or three, but that is not the reason you are here. My focus with this class will be to train you in the Shadow Fist style of martial arts. You might be wondering 'why do we need to know this?' Well, imagine yourself face to face with an enemy and your sword is nowhere to be found. Are you going to stick your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye? Or are you going to get right up to him, stick your hand through his sternum, and PULL HIS STILL BEATING HEART OUT?!"

"Now, I hear we have a celebrity in our class," the drill sergeant says cynically, walking down the line and stopping in front of Riku, "What is your name, boy?!"

"Sir, Riku, sir," Riku replies.

"Riku, huh?" the sergeant says, getting up real close to Riku, "That's a girly name if I ever heard one! Are you a homosexual, boy?"

"Sir, no, sir," Riku says.

"Liar!" the sergeant yells, "You must be the bottom of the relationship. I bet you take it like a girl and ask for seconds! Is that what you want to be?"

"Sir, no, sir," Riku replies.

"Christ, the Heartless must be more pathetic than I realized if some girly man like you sent them packing! Maybe you tired them out from your insatiable desire to be done from behind! Regardless, even if you somehow saved the universe twice, you are still a pathetic piece of tripe! Because of your success, your name in this unit from now on is Fluke. Is that clear, Fluke?"

"Sir, yes, sir," Riku says, a bit of pain in his voice as he submits.

"Good girl," the sergeant says, "You don't need to tell me about how some hobo gave you a 'keyblade' or any of the mystical rainbow powers it gave you. I already read about it in the gay pride newspaper." With that, the sergeant walks to the end of the line, stopping at the brown haired boy to the right of Emily. "What is your name, son?"

"Sir, Christopher Jones, sir," the boy says.

"That's it?!" the sergeant asks, "No fancy name? Do you even have a face, boy? A personality?"

"Sir, yes, sir," the boy responds.

"Lies!" drill sergeant nasty replies, "You're nothing! You are just an easily forgotten name on a page! You won't even get an obituary after the Heartless splatter you across the pavement! Your teammates won't even remember that you were ever with them even as you lie there bleeding! You're even more insignificant than the other people here today, if that were even possible! As such, your name from now on is 'Statistic'. Is that clear?!"

"Sir, yes, sir," Christopher replies.

"What is your excuse for aptitude, Statistic?" sarge asks.

"Sir, I'm good with a gun, sir," Christopher replies.

"Oh, Statistic here is 'good with a gun'," sarge says, an especially cynical tone with the last four words, "Any bottom feeding pond scum can pick up a gun and kill somebody! Do you have any skills that can actually be useful?"

"...Sir, no, sir," Christopher replies after thinking for a minute.

"Useless!" the sergeant yells, "I won't even dignify you with any more attention!" The sergeant walks up to Emily, giving a look of disdain.

"Holy hell, a man with massive tits!" sarge shouts.

"Sir, I'm a girl, sir," Emily says.

"Did I allow you to talk?!" the sergeant replies.

"Sir, no, sir," Emily replies.

"What is your name, boy?" the sergeant asks.

"Sir, Kiko, sir," Emily replies, softly.

"Kiko, huh? Did you regurgitate that name after your sexual reassignment surgery?"

"Sir, I'm a REAL girl, sir," Emily says in defiance, sick of the bullying attitude.

"Like hell you are!" sarge says, getting within a few centimeters of Emily's face, "Look, I know that when you were a boy, you were so whipped that you assumed huge silicon airbags on your chest will get you far. But in here, they will get you nowhere! Do you understand me?"

"Sir, yes, sir," Emily replies, swallowing her pride at Riku's bequest.

"Your new name is Butch," sarge starts, backing up a little, "Is that clear?"

"Sir, yes, sir," Emily replies.

"What are your skills, Butch?" sarge asks.

"Sir, I'm decent with knives, dual handguns, and sniper rifles, sir," Emily replies, recycling her form's wording.

"So you're only slightly less useless than Statistic, huh? Anything else on your impressive resume of worthlessness?"

"Sir, no, sir," Emily replies, not really caring to elaborate on her uncontrollable precognition.

"Thought so," sarge says, moving up to Chou and looking down on her, "What the hell is this?! I'm getting diabetes just by looking at you!"

"I'm sorr-" Chou starts, shrinking down as she cranes her neck to look up to sarge.

"Did I give you permission to speak, insect girl?" sarge asks.

"No, you-"

"Say my name!" sarge shouts.

"...Sir, no, sir..." Chou says, her eyes starting to water.

"What is your name, insect girl?" sarge asks.

"...Ch... Sir, Chou, sir..." Chou says.

"What the hell is wrong with you, maggot?" sarge asks, getting close enough that his head brushes up against her antennae.

"Ano... sir, I'm sorry, sir," Chou says, some tears starting to break.

"What are your useless skills?" sarge asks.

"Well, I'm-"

"Say my name!" sarge asks, getting right in her face with her antennae bending off him.

"...Sir, I'm... I'm a feylinus. I can-"

"Both sides of the sentence!" sarge shouts right into her face.

"...Sir, I have... magic... magical powers to... to... heal... and protect others... sir," Chou says, struggling with the language under the stress of the situation.

"Oh, is that so?" sarge asks, "Are you going to heal the Heartless to death? Huh?! What's your weapon?"

"Sir... I... I can use... wands... to am... amp... amplify my magic... sir..."

"So you're as pathetically weak as you look?" sarge asks.

"...Sir... yes, sir," Chou says.

"Pathetic!" sarge shouts right into her face. Chou turns her head away, but sarge uses his riding crop to force her head back into looking at his face, "You are a miserable little maggot, both figuratively and literally! Therefore, your new name is Squishy!"

"Sir, I'm sorry, sir," Chou apologizes, tears pouring out of her eyes.

"Sorry isn't going to cut it!" sarge shouts, "Who the hell do you think you are? You are wasting this school's time! You come in here wearing a dress I'd shoot my daughter for asking to buy. It hurts my eyes to look at you!"

"I'm sor-" Chou starts to say, trying to look away again. Sarge adjusts her head with the riding crop again.

"I'd get more progress training a literal insect than you," sarge yells, causing Chou to recoil some more, "You think your magical healing powers are going to stop the Heartless? Huh?!"

"I... I... I'm... I..." Chou says, starting to openly sob.

"Stop your sniveling!" sarge says, getting even more in her face. Chou leans back some more, falling right onto her butt. "Get up! On your feet or on your knees!"

"Leave her alone," Emily finally says. Sarge looks back up, giving Emily an icy stare.

"What's this? Somebody challenged me?"

"I just think that you're being a bit hard on Chou," Emily says as sarge gets right in her face.

"Is that so?" sarge asks, "You want to run this class?"

"Sir, no-" Emily starts to say as she realizes that she's in deep crap, getting interrupted.

"Everyone, back to the walls!" sarge shouts, placing his riding crop on Emily's shoulder as she tries to go with everybody else, "Except you. Go stand over there," sarge says, pointing to a spot with his crop. Emily reluctantly walks over there, turning to face sarge. They're about ten meters away from each other.

"Statistic!" sarge shouts, "Count to three!"

"One-" Christopher starts.

"My name, maggot!" sarge shouts.

"...Sir, one, sir! Sir, two, sir! Sir, three..."

A bright flash goes by Emily's eyes.

"...sir!"

The moment the R syllable finishes traveling through the air, sarge makes an attack. He practically teleports to Emily, a trail of sarge's colors being briefly visible on the path he took. He punches into Emily's stomach as he reaches her, sending her flying back. When she hits the wall, she forms a crater and gets embedded in it, stuck there. Another bright flash and Emily's back in the present.

"...sir!"

Emily dodges to the right as fast as she can, just barely evading the punch. She throws a right hook of her own at sarge, hitting his shoulder without him even flinching. They stay in this position for about a second before a huge amount of pain floods Emily. She starts holding back her swears while gasping loudly, grabbing her right hand with her left. She looks to see that she had her thumb inside her fingers, crunching and dislocating it when she connected her punch. Sarge scoffs at her, walking away as she stands there holding her thumb in agony.

"And this is why you maggots need me," sarge says, walking over to Chou and grabbing her arm, "Come on, get up!"

Emily, incensed at sarge grabbing Chou, makes a running dash at him. He effortlessly does an upwards back kick, sending Emily into a flip. He lets Chou go and turns around, punching into Emily's back at the apex. She flies through the room, embedding herself upside down and face first into the wall. She feels a huge amount of pain shoot through her as her shoulders dislocate and her nose breaks. She feels blood go through her eyes and into her hair as she hangs there.

"I like Butch here," Sarge starts, barely audible to Emily, "He has spunk and was willing to stand up for somebody else. However, you maggots should NOT think that this gives you the right to challenge me, lest you end up like him. Now, after only four maggots, I already have zero respect for all of you. Lets see what I think after forty."

Emily eventually slides out of the wall, hitting her head as she falls to the ground. She loses consciousness yet again.


	11. Equivalent Exchange

Emily begins to regain consciousness, a feeling of numbness throughout. For having broken her thumb, nose, and who knows what else by getting smashed into a wall, she's surprised at how disconnected she feels. All she can feel is the pressure from the floor and from something decently heavy on her stomach. She opens her eyes, seeing something pink and blurry as they adjust.

"Welcome back," a masculine voice says from out of view. Emily strains to recognize it, figuring out fairly quickly that it isn't Riku. Too deep. The pink blur on her chest gets off, going to the side. Emily lies there, quite dizzy and not really feeling strong enough to move. It takes a minute before her eyes adjust, enough strength returning for her to lift her head. She looks around to see Riku, Chou, and an anonymous looking 16 year old boy all around her watching.

"Do you feel okay?" Chou asks, lifting Emily's arm up and pressing her fingers on her wrist.

"I... um... I... guess..." Emily says, forcing herself to sit up. She fights against gravity as she gets to her feet, stumbling to a side as she tries to stand up. Riku and the anonymous boy quickly catch her by the arms before she hits the ground, holding her up. She starts to develop a headache as her vision swishes around, a bit of mild queasiness going through her.

"What happened?" Emily asks as Riku and the boy prop her on her feet.

"It's a side effect of healing you," Chou starts, "It should pass soon."

"Oh," Emily replies. Seems sort of weird, since Aerith's cure didn't involve feeling like this. Whatever.

"Are you okay to walk?" Chou asks.

"...yeah, let's roll," Emily says, trying to take a step and stumbling. Riku and anonymous boy quickly move in to catch her.

"Need some help?" Riku asks as they get Emily back on her feet.

"...sure," Emily replies. They start walking, heading out the open door and passing by a couple robots holding plaster and paint. The robots hover inside, closing the door behind themselves. Emily didn't really notice the first time through, but the grand hallway is really quite impressive. The room takes up about four regular stories, with the mezzanine located around the third story. The room is painted a regal blue, an intricate silver flower and vine border running along the edges of the wall. The floor is carpeted in the same color, with an elaborate pattern of its own similar to the wall borders. The ceiling is divided in four domed sections, each with an elaborate painting that look like the floor emblems from 'Awakening' in the games. She doesn't recognize any of the imagery, though.

"So... how did the rest of class go?" Emily asks as they walk around the mezzanine towards the grand staircase.

"Pretty much exactly what you saw," Riku responds, "He mocked everybody and gave us all nicknames. Then he made us all do 100 push-ups, walking across our backs. He just left you lying there as he continued class. You got off light, though."

"My nickname is Knockoff," the boy says, "Because my name is also Christopher."

"God, I hate him," Emily says, "Did he do that to you, too, Chou?"

"Yes," she says, looking a bit sad, "Thank you for standing up for me, though."

"No problem," Emily responds, "I couldn't let him be like that to you."

"People like you are why I joined," Chou starts, a smile on her face, "I want to protect you and everybody like you that is willing to stand up for what's right."

"Speaking of which," Emily starts, "You're not really going to be that useful of a healer if every cure makes people feel like what I imagine a hangover is."

"Oh," Chou starts, "This is just from fanlasnir. It will go away soon."

"Fanlasnir?" Emily asks as they stop by the stairs.

"I can only cure people that go through fanlasnir," Chou starts, "We usually try to arrange for it to be done at night before bed so the effects can be slept off."

"But what does it involve?" Emily asks.

"Swapping bodily fluids with a feylinus," Chou replies.

"Oh, you gave me some of your blood?" Emily asks, looking a bit wary.

"No," Chou replies, "That's impractical and a bit painful."

"Then what did... oh, **EWW**!" Emily shouts, breaking herself away from Riku and Christopher number two. She runs towards a nearby trash can, swerving and tilting around as she barely keeps herself from stumbling. She loses balance, stumbling towards the trash can. She catches onto it with both arms, propping herself up on it. She wants to throw up, but something within her prevents it. Instead, she starts spitting inside, her saliva tinted a bright pink. She keeps spitting, distressed at the color and indignant at the feeling of privacy invasion. Chou's eyes start to water again, an expression of sorrow on her face.

"I'm sorry!" Chou says, her voice wavering a bit, "I really needed to heal you."

"What did you do to me?!" Emily shouts in between spits. The taste of something sickeningly sweet with a tinge of saltiness starts to register as the numbness begins to wear off from Emily's head.

"I'm sorry!" Chou apologizes again, some tears breaking down her cheeks, "I'm so sorry! I thought you'd be fine with it. Everybody where I come from considers this a big honor, but I should have thought about the possibility of it being offensive to other people! I'm sorry!"

"I can't get the taste out," Emily says, continuing her spitting fit, "God, what the hell is this? Why is my spit still pink?"

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Chou keeps repeating, each repetition getting more distorted by her sobs.

"Kiko, you're overreacting," Riku says, walking up to her. Upon hearing that, Emily starts trying to calm herself down. She's distraught over the thought that her first kiss was with an alien girl. A girl! And she was unconscious, so she didn't exactly give her consent. Is this what rape is like, only even further? With that thought, she starts to get even more disturbing images of what the 'bodily fluids' could be. She banishes the icky thoughts from her head, realizing that there's no way Riku would just idly stand by and watch something like that. She thinks back to when she woke up, realizing that Riku looked a bit apprehensive but otherwise fine. No reason to believe that something too disgusting happened. She hyperventilates a little, clearing her face of emotion and speaking in as soft and calm a tone as possible.

"I'm sorry," Emily says, "You were acting in my best interest and had no reason to think I'd react like this. Please forgive me."

"Really?" Chou says, sniffling a bit as she ceases her sobbing.

"Come on, Kiko," Riku starts, "We need to go to the doctor's office."

"I'm fine," Emily states, taking a couple deep breaths, "I think I can walk on my own in a minute."

"That's not it," Riku starts, "You didn't get a physical examination. Everyone else got it before they came here, but you are a last minute addition."

"Oh," Emily says, pushing herself up onto her feet and standing up, "That makes sense."

"Shall we?" Riku asks, offering his hand.

"Yeah, let's," Emily says, allowing Riku to hold her as she slowly walks beside him to the other two people. Chou is still crying a little, wiping her tears as she tries to calm herself down. Emily, giving her best friendly expression, lets go of Riku and walks up to her.

"I'm sorry," Emily says, "It was cruel of me to react like that. I'm just very... sensitive about this sort of thing, you know?"

"I forgive you," Chou says, lightening up a bit, "I'm sorry for not getting your permission."

"It's okay," Emily says, "Is there anything else I should expect from your kiss? Am I going to turn into a 'feylinus' like you?"

"Nothing like that," Chou responds, ceasing her sobbing, "It just makes you immune to non-magical disease and allows us to cure you. It won't change you in any other way."

"So long as nothing else changes, I'm perfectly fine with what you did," Emily responds, turning to Riku, "Okay, lead the way, Riku."

"Okay," Riku says, facing the other two people, "We'll see you in the tower in a bit."

"See you later," Christopher number two says, walking around the mezzanine to one of the large archway doors leading outside. Chou follows behind after making a second glance towards Emily and Riku.

"I like Chou," Emily says as the two of them walk down the stairs, "She's so interesting."

"I'm glad you're making friends," Riku starts, "I was worried you were going to cling to me the entire time."

"Oh," Emily says, a bit self-conscious, "Sorry."

The two of them finish walking down the stairs, making a right U-turn and going to a hallway located behind the stairs. They walk through the large foyer, itself quite a spectacle. The ceiling is about fifteen meters above them, with marble pillars on either side of the walkway. The regal yellow wallpaper contains a large amount of detailed imagery, with artistic depictions of epic moments from the games... history all around. In between each pair of pillars is a shiny bronze statue of the various influential people across the worlds, seated on blocks of marble with plaques on the front detailing some basic information. Emily recognizes some of them such as Beast, Jack Skellington, Aladdin, Jack Sparrow, and others, but she's baffled by all the completely normal people. What place does General Trevor Mithas have amongst these legendary people? And why aren't Sora and Riku here? Are their statues kept somewhere more visible or something? It doesn't make much sense.

"Shouldn't there be a statue of you and Sora somewhere around here?" Emily asks, looking all around to make sure she didn't miss something.

"None of the people with statues here are active outside of their own worlds," Riku explains, "I'll let you figure out why."

"...oh," Emily says, realizing that it's for security reasons. They finish walking through the foyer, coming out to a large circular tower room. It's about 200 meters in diameter, with a softly ascending circular walkway about ten meters wide spiraling around on the outside wall of the room. In the cavernous center section, a waterfall cascades around a couple vertical thin brass beams traveling from the floor to the ceiling in the absolute center of the room. At the bottom of the structure is a cage, with some type of clockwork mechanism attached to the brass beams. The brass structure sits on an artificial island, covered in wet wildflowers and surrounded by deep blue water. Emily looks up to see that the walkway ends after about eight stories, the brass structure ending near a brass grate bridge extending from the end of the walkway. There's still another 30 or so stories of clustered towers and spires visible beyond where the walkway ends. The water comes out of eight rooftops near the tenth story level, the water arching towards the center. Some invisible force bends the water around the bridges, looking like an arched tunnel of water around them.

"Wow," Emily says, taking in the sights. The air around here has a soft, cool wetness to it. The light level is just perfect, casting the place in a bit of shadow but still leaving everything visible. Emily is just in total awe at this room. She walks with Riku up about a circle and a half of walkway, almost loathe to leave the room as they exit into a rather blank white hallway. The stark contrast with the elegant former rooms compared to this normal height, placid room takes Emily by surprise. Besides a computer terminal to the right as they enter, all she can see are simple wooden doors. This has to be one of the new additions to the castle. The two of them walk towards one of the nondescript doors, stopping a few meters away.

"Okay," Riku starts, "I'll wait for you in the atrium."

"Atrium?" Emily asks, unsure of what Riku is referring to.

"That big room we just came from," Riku explains, "I'll be on the bench to the left of the hallway."

"Oh," Emily responds, "Okay."

"See you in a bit," Riku says, walking away. Emily stands there a little, a bit intimidated by what she expects on the other side of the door. She is sort of apprehensive about doctors, with their impersonal remarks about her making her feel useless. She was always told that she needed counseling over her non-existent 'anorexia' and they always refused to believe that she just has a naturally fast metabolism and lack of appetite. Still, she's literally a new person now and there's no reason for her to expect the doctor in charge of a superhero school to be anything less than incredible. Thus, she opens the door to find... a grey haired man in his late fifties, wearing a white uniform and holding a clipboard. Disappointing. The rest of the room looks just like a regular doctor's office, with a bed covered by paper, a counter with a sink, a couple simple chairs, and some diagnostic equipment. Only thing that really catches her eye is a large brass machine in a corner. It has a skeletal cylinder shape to it, with a ring carrying some complex machine attached to six vertical beams. In the other corner is a more mundane looking machine made of stainless steel and just looking like a rectangular box with a few buttons on top, some thick cables connecting it to the larger machine.

"Hello..." the doctor says in a thick accent, looking down at his clipboard, "Kei koo?"

"It's Kiko," Emily starts, walking the rest of the way into the room and closing the door behind her, "You know, Ki as in a key for a lock and Ko, rhymes with low or bow."

"Ah," the doctor says, "Well, Kiko, my name is Doctor Leseus. Good meeting you. I am sorry my English, it is not good. You are here for physical, yah?"

"Yes," Emily says, "Should I sit down somewhere?"

"Ah, no, keep standing," he responds, grabbing some unfamiliar machine off the counter and walking over to Emily, "How did you get in school with no physical? Everyone got physical before were even consider for school."

"A friend got me in," Emily responds, flatly and honestly.

"Ah, good friend, yah?" Dr. Leseus says, "Still need fit school standard, though. Very high standard, yah. Hold arm out, please."

"Okay," Emily says, holding her left arm out. Emily gets a minor shock from the cold hands as Dr. Leseus holds her arm and places the unfamiliar machine on Emily's arteries.

"This hurt little," the doctor says, pressing a button on the machine. Emily gets a moderate jolt of pain through her as she feels several sharp things puncture her skin, the pain dissipating after less than a second. Dr. Leseus takes the machine off of her, gently pushing down slightly on her arm to signify that he doesn't need her to hold it up any more.

"Okay, Kiko, now need you standing on scale here," he says, pointing to the large brass machine. Emily walks over to it, stepping inside the the middle and turning to face the doctor.

"Like this?" Emily asks.

"Yah," Dr. Leseus responds, walking over to the other corner machine, "You stand there, arms at side, and no moving. Ready?"

"Ready," Emily replies. The doctor presses a button on the console, causing the ring structure to start descending very slowly as the machine makes a moderate humming and clicking noise. The machine sitting on the ring starts spinning around, emitting a soft blue light that seems to pierce through Emily's skin. The doctor places the unfamiliar handheld machine into a nearby slot on the wall, pressing a button. He then walks over to the counter, picks up the chart, and walks back to Emily.

"So," Dr. Leseus starts, "What bringing you here?"

"It's a required check up?" Emily responds, blinking a bit as the machine passes by her eyes.

"No," Dr. Leseus starts, "To Reidiahnt Gahrdeen Ahcahdeemy."

"Oh," Emily says, "I, um... just want to fight the Heartless?" Emily has no clue how to talk about her entrance to the world. She's even starting to doubt it herself.

"Says here you came from different world, yah?" the doctor says, reading something on the clipboard, "Heartless kill it?"

"Yes," Emily starts, "I don't really know what happened."

"It not important," Leseus says, "So... what eating habits you have?"

"I don't know," Emily says, "I haven't really had a chance to see what I like around here."

"But before, yah?" Leseus starts, "Lots, little? Lot of meat, lot of fruit, lot of candy?"

"It doesn't really matter that much," Emily starts, "I lost my old body and was given this one."

"Ah," he says, writing something down, "I guess other question sort of silly." The brass machine finishes circling around Emily, ascending back to its original position. Something starts printing from the console, dropping about three pages a second into the tray for a few seconds.

"What does this machine do?" Emily asks.

"It scan you," the doctor starts, picking up the stack of papers, "Gets graph. Let see... that's weird, you have no birth or genetic defect in human genome. 5'9 and three sixteen inch, 143 pound. Visual 10/20, reflex time 0.08 seconds, perfect color. Very high white muscle count, 240 pound bench press, and 10.4 second 100 meter sprint. You are best natural human I've ever tested."

"Really?" Emily asks, just looking at herself in awe. She was never the best _anything _and now she's told that she's the best 'natural' human. "What do you mean by 'natural'?" Emily asks, the language of the wording seeping in.

"You are not as good magic humans," he says, "Maybe middle of road to them."

"Oh," Emily says, her hopes dashed. The doctor picks up a small, flat wooden stick and a magnifying glass with a light from the counter, walking over to Emily.

"Say 'ahhh'," he says, holding the stick up. Emily, already knowing what this is for, opens her mouth. He gently pushes her tongue down, looking around inside. After a few uncomfortable seconds, he takes the stick out. He looks at the thick, pink saliva on the bottom of the stick,

"Already met fieleenoos, yah?" he asks.

"Yeah," Emily responds, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Dr. Leseus starts, "Just machine not see fieleenoos microbe yet. Say unknown type. Why middle of day, though?"

"Oh," Emily responds, "I... um... got injured."

"Ah," the doctor responds, "You are ready. Thank you for cooperation."

"Thank you," Emily says, walking through the door.


	12. Iron Chefs

Emily walks through the placid hallway, emerging back into the atrium. She looks around, finding Riku about a quarter circle down to the left sitting on a silver bench. Emily does a brisk walk over to him, waving as she comes within talking distance.

"Welcome back," Riku says, standing up and taking a few steps towards Emily, "How did it go?"

"He said I'm the best 'natural' human he's seen," Emily says.

"Not to be mean," Riku starts, starting to walk upwards on the walkway, "But that really doesn't mean as much as it sounds."

"Yeah," Emily says, following behind, "He said something about 'magic humans'. How does that work?"

"It's quite simple," Riku starts, "Some deity out there collects all the data on everybody that is going to be born. It will check into the future and see such details as bravery, tactical awareness, reflex, and general potential..."

"...and chooses the best people?" Emily finishes after a few seconds.

"No," Riku continues, his voice in cynicism mode, "It throws _that_ list away, then rolls some dice to decide which dart board to throw blind-folded darts at. Those are the people that get magic, whether it be by internal or external means."

"Random, huh?" Emily says, "I could have been a mage."

"...how?" Riku asks, stopping to face her. Emily is taken off-guard by Riku's lack of knowledge. Did Leon and company not tell him about her origin?

"It's a bit long..." Emily starts.

**--**

"...And that's how I ended up in Radiant Garden," Emily finishes.

"Interesting," Riku says, a small tingle of disbelief in his voice. They walk out onto a large stone bridge, the wind rustling their clothing. They are on the 35th story, walking away from the central cluster of towers towards one on the outer circle. The bridge itself is about 15 meters wide at its thin parts, with a large circular area in the center around 50 meters in diameter and two smaller circles with 30 meter diameters at the halfway points on either side. Intricate designs are carved into the stonework floor, with only a one and a half meter tall barrier on the sides. It's a daunting sight all around, with nothing but sky to be seen at eye level. Emily doesn't even dare to even go close to the barriers, staying as close to the middle as she can. She and Riku walk across the very long bridge, entering the tower on the other side.

The room that Emily and Riku walk into is a fairly expansive area. The room is divided into an inner square and an outer ring. The inner square looks like an artificial park, with several raised sections containing soil, grass, and trees. The ceiling over the square extends all the way to a skylight five stories above, sunlight pouring down. Assorted benches and small glass tables dot the area, offering plenty of places to relax. At the edges of the inner square on each middle corner is a spiral stairway going up to the four mezzanine floors, each of which has three doors per side. The other ring has a normal height ceiling, with tons and tons of sofas, chairs, and wooden tables all over. There are eight sections divided roughly by glass barriers, with two TV rooms, an arcade, a kitchen, an exercise room, a conference room, a computer room, and the hallway that Riku and Emily are standing in. There are about two dozen people out and about, most of whom are just hanging out and talking with each other.

"I love this school," Emily says as she walks alongside Riku towards the center, "This place must have two thousand times more funding than my old school."

"King Mickey wants only the best," Riku starts as they begin walking up a spiral staircase. They stop by a door at the middle section of the third floor that has Emily's four suitcases stacked in front of it, a black binder sitting on top.

"Oh, yeah," Emily starts, "I forgot about that book. How did it get it get here?"

"A robot probably picked it up where you left it," Riku explains.

"I take it this is my room?" Emily asks, taking her card out of a back pocket.

"Yes," Riku says, "Dinner is in an hour. I suggest reading the book. Want me to pick you up?"

"Yes, please," Emily says, deciding against offering for Riku to hang out with her. Too blatant and early.

"See you later," Riku says, walking away. Emily just watches as he walks down the stairs, the same conflicted feelings going through her mind. Riku is just so incredibly handsome, charming, and all around attractive. Those baggy clothes of his seem to only further accentuate his perfectly toned muscles. She starts imagining how athletic and flexible he must be. She continues to ogle him as he finishes walking down the stairs, heading through the artificial park. Emily is practically hanging over the side of the rail as she tries to keep Riku within her view when he looks back up at her. Emily snaps back to reality, quickly backing away out of view. She realizes that she is blushing and was probably giving a bit of an embarrassing face. She just stands there with her back propped against the wall, hyperventilating a little to calm down. After a minute, she walks back to her door. It doesn't take her long before she figures out how the scanner works. It looks just like a lens from one of the robots and one section of the card has some of the same markings that activated the robots. She holds the card in front of the scanner, a couple clicks emanating from somewhere within the wall before the door swings open.

The room is fairly large, with two doors located on the wall opposite the main door and one on the left wall. This room has a blue cloth couch facing a large flat screen TV on one side and a desk with a computer and rolling office chair at the other. The room is otherwise fairly sparse, painted a light blue with dark green carpeting. Emily moves the briefcases in two at a time, closing the door behind her. She decides to explore the rest of the room before unpacking anything, walking to the door on the right side of the far wall. She opens it to find a rather simple walk-in closet, with about three dozen hangers and a couple shelves. Nothing special. The door to the left of it leads into a bedroom. The largest thing in the room is a three meter long bed with a large wooden frame, a thick, fluffy blue blanket, and large blue pillows on it. Next to the bed is a wooden night stand, with a lamp, alarm clock, and what Emily assumes is something similar to a telephone. The room is painted in the same way as the other room, with a window behind the bed and a door on the left. Emily walks through the door to find a large bathroom, with an elaborate sink by a brightly illuminated mirror. Every type of grooming implement imaginable is available, with a lot of cosmetics. Both a sealed off shower and a bath tub are in one corner while a toilet and a bidet is in the other. Another door is to the left on the same wall as the door she came in through. Emily walks through it to find herself back in the couch room.

Emily starts unpacking her suitcases into the walk-in closet, arranging the large amount of clothing by her own special system of color. With everything unpacked, she decides she would like to wear something a bit more like herself than the cheap Radiant Raider clothing that Aerith bought her. She picks out a light blue blouse, a dark blue overcoat, a pleated black cloth skirt that goes down to her knees, and a pair of slip on sandals. She takes the clothing and walks into the bathroom for some personal grooming time.

--

Emily walks out of the bathroom, ready for an exciting night of meeting new people and talking with Riku. She's overwhelmed with thoughts of how awesome everything is going to be, with the school's seemingly infinite budget and King Mickey's assurance that everybody is 'strong of heart'. No more stale bread sandwiches or prissy bullies like Dana to ruin her school experience any more. She sits down on the couch, picking up the black binder and casually browsing through it. Nothing really catches her eye, with it mostly containing maps and some stuff involving the rules. It doesn't take long before she hears some clicking noises, with a very harsh robotic voice from near the door saying 'rye koo'. Emily hops onto her feet and walks over to the door, opening it.

Riku is just wearing his normal attire, disappointing Emily. She thought this was going to be a big social night, with all the new people in the school.

"Hello, Riku," Emily says, smiling.

"Hi," Riku says, a neutral expression on his face, "You look nice."

"Thank you," Emily says, ecstatic that Riku complimented her. This is a good first step.

"Did you read the book yet?" Riku asks.

"Um... not really," Emily says, looking a little uncomfortable. Why is Riku bringing up such humdrum things as rule books when tonight is supposed to be a fun night?

"Please bring it along," Riku says, "And don't forget your card."

"Okay," Emily says, going back inside to pick up the book and card. She walks alongside Riku, going down the spiral staircase and walking through the miniature park towards the exit. They walk through the entrance hallway and back out onto the bridge. After another worrisome walk across, they enter another grand hallway. It is circular in design, with a mezzanine located on the inner circle and marble pillars holding it up. Six symmetrical spiral staircases connect the mezzanine to the lower floor, each of them aligned with an exit. The walls have a regal yellow wallpaper, more designs of various historical events adorning it. Emily and Riku turn right and walk around, going a sixth of a circle and up a spiral staircase.

They walk through the door, entering a large room. In the center of the room is a collection of tables holding lots of food, with a bunch of robots bringing in and carrying out trays. There's one robot with a chef's hat on top of its head by a tabletop stove, grilling omelets and hamburgers made to order. After a small ring of blank space surrounding the buffet, there are rows upon rows of thick wooden tables extending all the way to the walls of the room. The walls are a natural wood color, decorated with statues of people Emily didn't recognize inside the enclaves. The ceiling is a giant domed skylight, rays of dusk sunlight flooding in. Riku leads Emily over to a table where Chou, Christopher 2, and some other people that Emily doesn't recognize are sitting.

"Hello, Riku," a blonde haired boy says as Riku and Emily walk up to them.

"Hello, Greg," Riku responds, "This is Kiko. Kiko, Greg."

"Nice to meet you," Emily says, holding her hand out for him to shake. She takes it back when he doesn't react after a few seconds.

"Over here is Danielle," Riku says, motioning to a red haired girl, "Danielle, Kiko."

"Nice to meet you," Danielle says, smiling.

"And here's Ahmed," Riku says, motioning to a boy with black hair and an olive complexion, "Ahmed, Kiko."

"A pleasure," Ahmed says in a moderate accent reminiscent of the Middle East, nodding.

"I have something to take care of," Riku says, "I'll help you choose some food when I get back, Kiko."

"Okay, Riku," Emily says, smiling. She sits down next to Chou, with Christopher 2 on Chou's right, Ahmed across from Emily, Greg across from Chou, and Danielle across from Christopher 2. Emily watches as Riku walks away, heading towards a collection of tables near the other side of the hall. He stops at a table where a familiar brown haired boy and dark red haired girl are sitting.

"Kiko?" Danielle says, getting her attention.

"Hmm?" Emily responds, turning to face Danielle.

"We were wondering if you could tell us what world you come from?" Danielle asks, with everybody at the table looking at Emily.

"Oh," Emily starts, a bit uncomfortable, "I come from Hometown, USA."

"Hometown, USA?" Christopher 2 asks.

"It was just a normal world," Emily states, "It got destroyed by the Heartless and I ended up here in Radiant Garden."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Christopher 2 consoles.

"It's okay," Emily starts, "I didn't have that much going for me there."

"But to lose everything you once knew," Ahmed says, "It must be terrible."

"I'm pretty sure they survived," Emily says, thinking fast to cover up her insensitive remark, "If I made it, I have to believe everybody else did."

"I hope so," Ahmed says.

"Have you guys been to the arcade yet?" Greg asks, "They have a Dance Maven machine with the entire playlist!"

"Dance Maven?" Emily asks.

"It's great," Greg says, "I can show you after dinner."

"He's the dancing king," Danielle starts, "He set so many records on our world."

"Oh, I'm not so great," Greg says, blushing a little.

"You're awesome," Danielle says, moving in a little to give him a hug, "You don't have to be so modest."

"I'd love to see what Dance Maven is about," Emily says, not really caring. Sounds like Dance Dance Revolution. She looks around the room, hoping she can find somebody more interesting. She sees other small packets of blah people, all of whom are just so normal looking as to inspire indifference. One group catches her eye, though. Two boys and two girls, each sitting in pairs. The first boy is a very tall and muscular teen of about 18, wearing a stretched red T-shirt with a white star on it. He has spiky red hair, glowing red eyes, and a square jaw. The girl sitting next to him is a buxom girl of about 17, wearing a green, sleeveless leather catsuit with a white star above her left breast. Her green hair is cut evenly just as it reaches neck level, with a bang covering one of her glowing green eyes. The slender girl across from her looks to be about 16, wearing a frilly yellow button down gown with a prominent white star making up the top button. She has shiny, long blonde hair and glowing yellow eyes. The boy next to her is an average proportioned guy of about 17, wearing a blue bomber jacket and a white star medallion around his neck. He has blue hair done in a fauxhawk, with glowing blue eyes.

"Who are those power rangers over there?" Emily asks, motioning towards the group.

"Power rangers?" Ahmed asks, a perplexed look on his face

"...Nevermind," Emily says, realizing that she's delving into pop culture that would not be familiar amongst the denizens of this universe.

"I heard they're sort of arrogant," Danielle says.

"They can't be too bad," Emily responds, "Mickey said that strength of heart matters a lot to him."

"They scare me," Chou says, "They're big."

"I think we should introduce ourselves," Emily says, "I want to have lots of friends here."

"They worry me," Greg says, "They seem like jocks."

"Oh, please," Emily says, "There can't possibly be jocks here. This school is too nice to have cliques."

"Whatever you say," Christopher 2 responds.

"Come on," Emily says, standing up and starting to walk towards the color coded people. The other people in her group exchange worrisome looks before they also get up. As the six of them walk over to the other table, the yellow girl says something to the rest while motioning towards Emily and company. As Emily's group draw close to the table, the four star insignia people all stand up, backing away from the table and standing side by side. Emily walks up to them as the other five people of her group stand back a little.

"Hello, there," the blue guy says in a bold tone, smiling as he bows to Emily.

"Hi," Emily says, smiling and giving a curtsy, "My name is Kiko."

"Kiko, huh?" the blue guy says, "Allow us to introduce ourselves. I'm the Blue Harrier, master of guns with power over ice and water!" As he says that, he makes gun shapes with his hands, pointing his right hand forward and his left hand up while winking.

"I'm the Yellow Kite," the yellow girl starts in a high pitched voice, "Mistress of magic with power over wind and lightning!" As she says that, she holds right flattened palm in front of her, her left flattened palm facing her right elbow crook, and a focused look on her face.

"I'm the Green Falcon," the green girl starts in a demure voice, "Mistress of swords with power over the earth!" As she says that, she blows a kiss with her left hand while holding her right hand behind her waist.

"I'm the Red Hawk," the red guy starts in a very deep voice, "Master of strength with power over fire!" With that, he holds both of his clenched fists up in the air in front of him while giving a defiant expression.

"And we are... The Order of the White Star!" they say in unison as they extend their right clenched fists towards a central position in front of them. After a few seconds, Christopher 2 starts giving them a golf clap. The rest of Emily's group joins in with their clapping, going for about eight seconds before the White Stars break their positions and go back into their natural states.

"Bravo," Christopher 2 says, a small bit of cynical undertone, "I love a well rehearsed show."

"Thank you," Harrier says, either ignoring or completely missing the undertone, "Now, I see you're interested in us. Are you here to apply for the club?"

"Club?" Emily asks, a bit surprised.

"It's quite simple, you see," Falcon starts, "When you're as great as us, you can't waste time on just any person. We don't just have all the time in the world, you know. No, only people that meet the standards for our club are worthy of our time."

"We need to know that you're dedicated to our cause," Kite starts, "We have rigid standards for clothes and grooming. Already, all of you need a lot of work."

"And you need to be strong!" Hawk starts, "No weaklings allowed!"

"What do you say?" Harrier says, pulling a pad of paper with a lot of text on it from behind his back and taking off six sheets, "A form for each of you. We'll be holding tryouts at dinner the day after tomorrow."

"You're asking us to fill out a form... to be your friends?" Christopher 2 responds, a blatant tone of disbelief in his voice and face.

"You have to see it from our perspective," Harrier starts, "When you're as great as us, you just can't settle for second best of anybody else."

"Um... okay..." Emily says, reluctantly taking the sheets of paper from Harrier. After distributing them to everybody, she looks down the form to see the following as the first paragraph:

_Welcome and thank you for your interest in joining the Order of the White Star Fan Club, also known as the Order of the Silver Star (or Silver Stars, for short). We know that you are just dying to get to be our friends, but because of our fantasticness, we can't accept everybody. There are too many people in the universe to dedicate ourselves to just anybody. In order to make sure that the very best people become our friends, we have a rigorous testing process. We will test your potential in the areas of loyalty, beauty, fashion, and strength. Loyalty, your ability to follow our excellent guidance and do whatever it takes to keep the Order going. Beauty, your ability to be a guiding light of attraction with which to inspire others. Fashion, your ability to keep up with the rapidly changing landscape of clothing and maintain the highest standards so as to concurrently maintain your beauty. Strength, your ability to take care of anything the Order needs done. We do not intend to staff the Silver Stars with anything less than the best. You must be capable on all these fronts and you must swear allegiance to us. We may ask you from time to time to handle business for us. Shopping, gathering information, talking with people we do not have time for. We are very busy, so you will have to do quite a bit of work for us. In exchange, we promise that we will allow you to grace our presence about two hours a week. Obviously, people as busy as we are cannot afford to spare any more. In order to join, you must pledge all your money to the Order. We need it in order to get our common club area up and going, but we promise that we will give you enough money to maintain your Fashion duties. More information can be found in the following paragraphs._

Needless to say, this didn't mesh well with Emily... or anybody else reading it.

"Let me get this straight," Emily says, finally growing a backbone as she realizes that this isn't just some weird eccentric quirk, "In order to be your friends... we have to give you all our money and swear total allegiance to you, conforming to your standards of appearance and behavior while doing all your errands for you?"

"Yes," Harrier says, not quite detecting the cynicism, "So, are you with us or against us?"

"I'm not against you..." Emily starts to say.

"So you're signing up?" Harrier says, not waiting for Emily to finish her thought after her dramatic pause.

"No," Emily says, "Hell, no. This is not what I had in mind. I just want to be normal friends. Not this cult crap."

"Cult?!" Hawk says, indignant. Falcon whispers something to him as she gives him a shoulder rub.

"If you read the fourth paragraph," Harrier starts, "You'll find out something important. Please look it over before you make such brazen statements." Emily decides to read it, even though there's no way she can be convinced to join after that first paragraph:

_Alongside the White and Silver Stars are also the Grey and Black Stars. Grey Stars are just simply applicants that we have found lacking. They will just be ignored. However, Black Stars are people that, for one reason or another, turned their backs to our amazing specialness. Since only evil people can willfully choose to deny our excellence, we have to go by the assumption that anyone that does not apply to join the Silver Stars are bad people. Black Stars will be frowned upon by the White and Silver Stars, with us doing everything we can to make their lives miserable. We owe it to the Order as a whole to make sure that the environment is free of evil and as such, we shall deliver on that promise._

"How did you get in this school?" Emily asks, a tone of disbelief in her voice. Her high school never had any group like this and it was way, way worse than this place.

"Because we are awesome?" Kite says, a highly condescending tone in her voice.

"Here's what I think of your cult," Emily says, tearing the application in half vertically. Kite gives an exaggerated gasp while the other White Stars glare at Emily.

"You did not do that," Harrier says, a hostile tone in his voice.

"Are you challenging us?" Falcon says, getting right up to Emily. The piercing green eyes start to make Emily realize just how stupid this is. She was just incensed about the audacity of this. Now, she realizes that she's provoking them.

"No," Emily starts, her voice going a bit weak, "I'm sorry if I seemed like I was-"

Falcon shoves Emily up into the air, launching her about 20 meters away. Emily crash lands onto a table, sliding across and taking some unremarkable people by surprise as she collides with their dishes. Emily, lying there in pain, sees Harrier hover up in the air and fly towards Emily. Hawk picks up a chair and tosses it over to Harrier, who grabs it over his head with both arms. He starts to bring the chair in an arc down on Emily when a hand grabs the chair. Emily looks to the side, seeing Riku attached to the hand. He looks pretty angry, staring right in Harrier's glowing blue eyes.

"Is there a problem?" Riku asks, an icy tone in his voice.

"No, nothing at all, fellow hero," Harrier says in a respectful tone, letting the chair go and hovering away. Riku places the chair down, following behind as Harrier gets on the ground and walks back to the other White Stars. Emily slides off the table's side past the befuddled spectators and walks up to Riku as he starts talking.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Riku asks, glaring at them.

"This Black Star here tore our form," Harrier starts, "The White Stars can't take this sort of disrespect."

"I don't care," Riku starts, "Did you read the rules?"

"We've been too busy recruiting potential Silver Stars to read the book," Harrier says, taking a form out and handing it to Riku, "Would you like to join? We always accept established heroes like yourself." Riku quickly glances over the form, his face getting more enraged as he reads it. He looks up after about half a minute, tearing the form apart.

"Keep your cult away from here," Riku says, "This school is supposed to be accessible to everybody and people like you are harmful to the atmosphere."

"It's a shame you feel this way," Harrier says, "Well, if you want to join, you just need to come to us. We'll always save a spot for a hero like you." With that, he walks away. Hawk and Kite walk with him, Falcon staying behind. She walks up to Riku.

"I'm sorry about my friends," Falcon says, sounding very empty in her apology, "I think you're a nice guy. Strong, lean, handsome. I have some tickets to the rock festival in a few days and I would love if you could accompany me."

"I pass," Riku says, "I'd rather not fuel your ego."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Falcon says with a fake sad tone, pulling a notecard and pen out, "Here, let me write down my room and cell numbers if you would like to go out with me sometime." In the background, Chou approaches the White Stars, giving her form back to them.

"I don't see that happening," Riku says as she quickly jots something down. In the background, Harrier says something with a mean expression on his face to Chou as he snatches the form out of her hands, walking away as she stands there with her eyes watering.

"Oh, don't be shy," Falcon responds, smiling as she hands Riku the card, "I know you feel intimidated by my buxom charms, but a hero like you shouldn't be bashful. Anyway, I need to catch up with my friends, but I will enjoy hearing from you." Falcon turns around and jogs a bit to catch up with her brethren, all of them walking out the main door. Riku tears the note card apart and turns towards Emily.

"Can you believe those people?" Emily says, turning to face Riku.

"I don't know why Mickey took them in," Riku starts, "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Emily says, "I don't know why I didn't get a vision of that shove."

"I'm sorry," Riku says, "I should have warned you about them."

"It's okay," Emily says, "I'm fine. This dress will probably need to go to the dry cleaners, but I'm fine."

"I just wanted to make sure you're okay," Riku says, "We should go help Chou. She looks sort of sad."

"Okay," Emily says, walking alongside Riku as they head towards Chou. She is softly crying into her hands as Emily walks up to her.

"What's wrong?" Emily asks, a look of worry on her face.

"I just wanted to give the form back to them," Chou starts, softening up on her crying, "Everyone else tore their's, but it wasn't really our property. When I gave it back to him and told him I didn't want to join, he said I am a freak of nature and he hopes I die in a training accident."

"There, there," Emily consoles, "Don't worry about what they think. They're dicks."

"If you think it's okay," Chou responds, sniffling as she wipes her eyes, "I won't worry about them."

"That's better," Emily says, turning to look for everybody else. She finds them back at their table, resuming their meal as they talk with each other.

"Chou?" Riku says, trying to get her attention.

"Yes, Riku?" Chou responds, turning to face him.

"I need to borrow Kiko for a little," Riku says to her, "Could you tell the others we'll meet back in the southwest tower after dinner? Also, have them bring Kiko's book with them."

"Okay," Chou says, smiling, "I'll see you later, Kiko. Thank you for standing up for us."

"No problem," Emily says in an unsure tone, watching as Chou walks off. She turns to Riku.

"So..." Riku starts, "What do you think of your new friends?"

"I think they're nice," Emily starts, "But they're sort of boring."

"That's a good thing," Riku starts, "People end up like the White Stars if they get too... 'interesting'."

"I guess," Emily says, "You're very interesting, though, and also really nice. I wish everybody could be like you. Anyway, what did you want to do?"

"I want to introduce you to my friends," Riku says, "After we get some food from the buffet."

"Okay," Emily says, excited as she walks alongside Riku.


	13. Luckiest Number

Emily walks alongside Riku as they go around the buffet, trays in hand with plates and cutlery. As Emily lazily collects the same food as Riku, she thinks about what she saw. She's a bit miffed that even in this utopia of a school, there still exist cliques and social bullying. How did these people slip under the radar if 'strength of heart' matters most of all? Even their motif is lame. And why didn't her precognition come through for her? She figured out that there's probably a minor delay on her precognition judging by Tifa and Williams defeating her shortly after visions, but why didn't it work this time? There's no reason it shouldn't have. With a tray full of food almost identical to Riku's, Emily walks alongside him as they head towards a table by the east wall. A boy of about age 15 with spiky brown hair and blue eyes is eating some type of meat that Emily didn't recognize. He is wearing a black with white trim zipper jacket over a blue and red shirt, a pair of black fingerless gloves with three studs and a white X each, a pair of black poofy shorts with red pouches strapped to the sides by yellow belts, and two over-sized black and yellow zipper sneakers with an X strap over the middle. Sora, of course. Across from him sits a dark red haired girl with blue eyes. She is wearing a fuchsia, vinyl, zippered one piece tube dress with a black bookbag strapped to her left side and a pair of white and light purple sneakers. Kairi. Riku and Emily walk up to them.

"Hi, Riku!" Sora calls over, smiling widely as he waves.

"Hey, buddy," Riku says, giving a small smile, "How was class?"

"It was okay," Sora starts, "The big woman teaching it was sort of mean. She gave us all nicknames. Mine is 'Fluke'."

"You, too?" Riku asks, chuckling a bit, "Did she accuse you of homosexuality as well?"

"No, nothing like that," Sora says, a little bit of confusion in his voice, "So, I see you got a girlfriend. I'm happy for you, Riku."

"She's not my girlfriend," Riku says, "Leon wants me to help her around." As those words travel through the air, Emily's emotions start to swarm. Did Riku just say he doesn't like her? Emily does her best to keep up a facade as a hundred thoughts go through her head.

"Awww," Sora says, "But you look so cute together."

"Kiko, this is Sora," Riku starts, "Sora, Kiko."

"Pleased to meet you," Sora says, offering his hand.

"Thank you," Emily says, shaking his hand as she tenuously holds her tray propped against her stomach.

"And here's Kairi," Riku states, motioning towards the appropriate person, "Kairi, Kiko."

"It's nice to meet you," Kairi starts, "I am looking forward to spending time with you as our new friend."

"Thank you," Emily responds, forcing a smile, "I'm looking forward to it as well."

"Well," Sora starts, pulling the chair beside him away, "Don't just stand there on our behalf. Come on, sit down, join us! I want to hear all about you, Kiko." Riku sits down next to Sora, with Emily sitting down next to Kairi. Emily sits there, feeling a little uncomfortable with the attention being brought upon her.

"How did your training go, Kairi?" Riku asks, getting some conversation going that doesn't immediately focus on Emily. She's quite thankful for it.

"It was hard..." Kairi starts, her voice going a bit more neutral. Emily just phases out a bit as she eats her meal, a bit preoccupied by Riku's earlier statement. Does he not like her? She's doing everything she can to be a good girlfriend. Does he not like the way she's dressed? She can change. She only wears 'rebellious' clothes because she wanted to bug her parents anyway. It would be a bit painful to wear pink, but if it is required, she can do it. Maybe he wants somebody that shares his interests? But that brings up the big question of what his interests actually are. She already knows from the Destiny Islands sequence in the first game that he obviously likes hanging around Sora and Kairi, exploring, and practicing his swordsmanship. However, these aren't really things that she can share with him. She's not either Sora or Kairi, there isn't a whole lot that isn't documented in the castle, and she's not exactly anywhere near Riku's skill or potential. There has to be something she can share with him.

"Um, Kiko?" Sora says, snapping her back to reality.

"Hmm?" Emily responds, turning to face Sora.

"We were kind of wondering if you could tell us where you come from?" Sora asks, a curious look on his face. Everybody else is looking at her as well.

"Oh," Emily says, getting a little tired of explaining this to everybody, "I come from another universe."

"Another universe?" Sora asks, confused.

"Yeah," Emily starts, "In it, this universe is the subject of a video game. They must have been able to see into this universe, though, because here we are."

"That's weird," Sora says, "Do they watch us all the time?"

"No," Emily explains, "I think they just gathered some information and made a game out of it. It's not all the time."

"That's still scary," Sora remarks.

"Anyway, you don't have to worry about that any more," Emily explains, her voice a little too cheerful, "The Heartless destroyed my world."

"I'm sorry," Sora consoles, "I know how it feels to lose your world."

"I think everybody survived," Emily starts, deciding to avoid the pitfall that cast a pall over the last conversation, "I was nothing special and I survived. Anyway, I ended up in some... sub-world with an angel overseeing it. Sora, do you remember your dream a few days before the Heartless destroyed the Destiny Islands the first time?"

"Um, yeah..." Sora says, looking just a little uncomfortable, "Why?"

"It was just like that," Emily continues, oblivious to Sora's discomfort, "The person in charge of it even said the same things. Anyway, I was given a new body and some new skills I don't understand. Something called 'Assassin', with a focus on stealth assassination with guns and knives. That angel then dropped me off in an alleyway of Radiant Garden. I then met up with Leon and friends, who set me up in this school."

"I hope the people from your old world are okay," Sora consoles, changing the topic a little.

"I'm optimistic about the future," Emily continues, "I really like this school. Everything here is so... nice. My old school had a lot of rich bullies who had even the teachers working on their side. Everybody was mean to me and all the teachers were really boring. But here, I feel like everything is going to be great. Only thing I don't like are those 'White Stars'. They're dicks and not even very original ones at that."

"They're big heroes in their own world," Sora explains, "King Mickey wanted them specifically for some reason. Riku and I tried to convince him otherwise, but here they are."

"King Mickey said all that stuff about 'strength of hearts'," Emily starts, sounding sort of disappointed, "Yet lets these people in?"

"Actually," Riku starts, something about that statement bothering him, "He was referring to susceptibility to the Heartless. As it turns out, the 'darkness' doesn't really correlate with behavior except where the Heartless themselves are concerned. Those with a lot of 'darkness' are more likely to either attempt to control the Heartless or become one. However, even a lot of 'darkness' can be offset by sheer willpower. Just look at me."

"Still," Emily starts, "This should be a friendly place. I don't want it to be like my old school."

"I'm sure Mickey won't let them form that cult," Riku responds.

"So, Kairi," Emily says, turning to face her, "What sort of classes are you taking?"

"I don't have a schedule yet," Kairi responds, smiling as she goes into mild enthusiasm mode, "But as a Princess of Heart, I know how important I am and I want to help everybody the best I can!"

"What does being a 'Princess of Heart' mean, though?" Emily asks, "I know that it means a lack of 'darkness' within the heart and some inherent connection to Kingdom Hearts... but what else is there to it?"

"I don't really know," Kairi says, sounding a bit uncertain, "I don't have much control over my magic. It just sort of... comes to me. I was hoping I could find out how to control it by going to school here."

"What weapon are you going to use?" Emily asks, "I remember Riku gave you that keyblade."

"He didn't give me a keyblade," Kairi states.

"...what?" Emily asks, a bit surprised. She was sure that she saw Riku during his Ansem... Xehanort look-a-like phase give Kairi a keyblade.

"It was a normal sword," Riku explains, "I didn't expect to keep the keyblade with the way I was, so I kept a regular sword with me as a backup. By the time I met up with Kairi again, I knew I wasn't going lose the keyblade, so I gave her the extra sword."

"But it looked like a keyblade," Emily says, even more confused.

"It was just a regular longsword," Riku says, "Nothing special. Grey straight blade, black handle."

"Huh..." Emily says, realizing that Square-Enix might have embellished some details in development of the games, "What happened to it, anyway?"

"The Heartless got it away from me," Kairi says, sounding a bit sad, "I'm useless as a fighter."

"You seemed okay to me," Emily starts, "Not Riku or Sora level... but for just freshly picking up a sword, you seemed good."

"If you think so," Kairi says, "I'll try my best just for you."

"Thank you," Emily says, "I have full confidence in you."

"So," Riku starts, "How are Selphie and Tidus doing?"

"Oh, they're doing great," Kairi starts. Emily tunes out, not really caring about the C-list NPCs from the first game. She came up with a great idea while she was comforting Kairi. What if she tries to get her way into Riku's life through mutual friendship? She never really found Sora to be too likable or Kairi too well developed, but they're definitely interesting people and represent cornerstones in Riku's life. Obviously, she can't just expect to get Riku all to herself. However, Kairi presents a dilemma. Emily always sort of assumed that Sora and Kairi are together, but thinking back on the games made her realize that Kairi always came across as a bit undecided. She gets more scenes with Sora, but that was the natural consequence of him being the main character. However, Sora's comment about Riku getting a girlfriend might have been from the perspective that he, too, has a girlfriend. Emily knows better than to flat out ask about anybody's relationship status, lest she come across as attempting to aggressively move in. The best course of action then hits her like a sack of bricks. All she has to do is play matchmaker. She can endear herself to the close group of friends by being sensitive, caring, and helpful, with the subtle focus being that Sora and Kairi are made for each other. If she can fully integrate with the group and remove her only competition, Riku will have no choice but to fall for her. It's perfect. However, she needs to figure out a way to gauge Sora and Kairi's existing relationship first.

"...and that's what has been happening on the Destiny Islands the past six months," Kairi finishes. Emily realizes that she probably missed some important information in this exchange. Best to just listen and hope a clue comes up.

"I'm glad things are going well on the Destiny Islands," Sora says, "It's been tough helping to set up this academy the past few months."

"I'm impressed with this school," Emily starts, "This was all set up in six months?"

"A little longer than that," Sora clarifies.

"One thing I don't understand, though," Emily starts, "You and Riku saved the universe. Twice. Why are you here as students? You should be teaching."

"The universe gets saved on a regular basis," Riku explains, "A good chunk of the people here have saved more than just their own world. Greg and Danielle stopped Organization XIII from a plan that would have converted several solar systems into power for their Kingdom Hearts."

"Greg and Danielle?" Emily starts, a slight tone of disbelief in her voice, "But they seem so... normal."

"They're actually two of the most powerful mages we've encountered," Riku explains, "Appearances are deceiving."

"I guess they are," Emily responds, realizing that she'd get more mileage if she tries to find out what abilities people have, "So, um... who is the most powerful mage?"

"Yellow Kite," Riku says, sounding cynical and irritated, yet truthful.

"It always feels like the people that are the 'best' always become like those guys," Emily muses, "What's their story, anyway? They seem too perfectly suited for each other."

"To my understanding," Riku starts, "They have some type of reincarnation thing going on. If one dies, they all die and reincarnate directly into compatible five year old children."

"What happens to the child?" Emily asks.

"I don't know," Riku starts, "They probably get erased out of existence."

"That's terrible," Emily responds, "I hate to imagine what the parents feel."

"They consider it a really big honor," Riku states, "I don't know. Their world as a whole is sort of messed up. Between all the religions worshiping them and the governments fighting over who gets to claim them... it just seems like their existence caused as many problems as it fixed."

"Going back to my old question, though," Emily says, realizing her train of thought was derailed, "Why did you and Sora join this school? As students, I mean."

"We both realized we have large gaps in our skills," Riku explains, "Also, we wouldn't make good teachers because a lot of our ability stems from our keyblades. We can't exactly give away keyblades."

"Yeah," Emily responds, some disappointment in her voice, "It sucks. I really would have loved to have a keyblade."

"Well," Riku starts, backing up from the table a little, "Dinner is wrapping up fairly soon and I promised I'd meet with the other residents of the southwest tower."

"Would you like to join us, Sora, Kairi?" Emily asks, also getting up. She doesn't want this to feel like Riku just propping her up some more and what better way to integrate herself into the group than to offer an invitation?

"Oh, we're also meeting people tonight," Sora replies, "Otherwise, I would go."

"Damn," Emily says, a tone of playful disappointment, "See you at breakfast tomorrow? Same table?"

"Sure," Sora responds, smiling, "See you later."

"See you later," Kairi echoes.

"Later," Emily says, waving as she and Riku walk away.


	14. Paranoia Max 300 Unlimited Mix

Emily walks alongside Riku as they travel out of the dining hall. She is a bit miffed that Sora and Kairi aren't coming along, since her plan revolves around including them in as much as she can. As long as Riku is with her out of mere obligation, it's not really personal time and he's unlikely to really see her for what she really is. Just a favor for Leon. What she needs is the group all together if she's going to stand a chance. She thinks about what she could do tomorrow as she walks alongside Riku through the circular hallway. She starts her meticulous walk directly in the center of the bridge, slowing down and crouching a little as a particularly disturbing thought crosses her mind. Riku looks back to her, a small bit of annoyance on his face.

"Kiko, this bridge is perfectly safe," he calls over, "You can't fall over even if you tried."

"But..." Emily says, going a bit weak in the knees with the concept of falling over reinforcing her earlier image, "It's so windy up here. What if I get blown over?"

"You're not going to get blown over," Riku starts, "There's about... a dozen different safety systems in place. You have to intentionally jump off, for starters."

"But I'm... I'm so weak..." Emily sputters out as a ton of fear washes over her, "I broke my legs after maybe five floors."

"That's perfectly normal," Riku says, "Come on, buck up and walk tall."

"What's going on?" a female voice says from behind Emily, "Scared of heights, Kiko?"

"I... I see myself... plunging to my death..." Emily says, vivid imagery going past her eyes as she lies there, hyperventilating. Danielle walks up to Emily, offering a hand.

"Don't worry," Danielle reassures, "I won't let anything happen to you."

"But I... I have visions..." Emily starts, "I foresaw Riku getting killed and this is just like that." Riku sighs and walks over to the barrier near Emily, hopping on top of it as he does a mid-air 180 degree turn to face her. He gives a wave before he stretches his arms to his side and lets himself tilt back, jumping as he reaches a 45 degree angle and plummeting over the edge.

"Riku!" Danielle and Emily both shout. Danielle runs over to the barrier, doing a vault over it and falling down. A couple seconds later, Emily gains enough control over herself to run over as well, her fear for replaced with an overwhelming worry for Riku and Danielle. She runs over to the side, looking down to find... four robots close to each other in a tight formation, each holding the corner of a net. Inside the net are Riku and Danielle, a bit too close for comfort. Danielle looks a bit irritated as Riku holds back his chuckles.

"Not funny!" Emily shouts, now sort of angry at Riku. He looks like he's enjoying himself a bit too much for having just jumped off the side of a bridge.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Riku says, a bit more focused on the girl on top of him, "Kiko was taking this too seriously."

"That was really goddamn stupid!" Danielle says, "What if those robots didn't catch you?"

"Then I guess I'd have been saved by the cyclone elementals," Riku responds as the robots start lowering them to the floor of the bridge, "Or the soft water. Or the teleporters."

"That was still moronic," Danielle responds, "What if none of that worked?"

"Then I would have just glided as I reached the ground," Riku responds, flatly, "But that's not something Kiko can do."

Two robots by one side let go of their corners, with the other two flying up as they drag the net. Riku and Danielle tumble over each other as they get rolled out, ending with Riku sitting on top of Danielle as the robots fly away. She shoves him off with great force, standing up and dusting herself off. Emily walks over to Riku, offering her hand.

"Are you okay?" Riku asks, ignoring Emily's expression as he hops onto his feet without her help.

"You're asking me?" Emily responds, a bit peeved.

"You're not afraid of falling any more are you," Riku asks, "Anger overrides fear, after all."

"...no," Emily says, feeling a bit miffed at the manipulation, "I'm fine now."

"I'm sorry I did that," Riku explains, "I know how phobias can be."

"I'm not phobic," Emily says, feeling a bit indignant at the suggestion, "I just had a vision of me falling over the side."

"Which didn't happen," Riku explains, "Come on, everybody is waiting for us."

"Okay," Emily concedes, no longer really feeling too mad. She has no right to confront Riku at this stage and she'd much rather not risk coming across as a tsundere or worse. Riku looks over to Danielle, getting inflicted with a bit of a mean expression from her before she walks inside the tower. Riku starts walking over to the door, turning to Emily to make sure that she's following. She walks alongside him, going inside the huge tower. There is a bit of spread out activity, with each of the TV rooms displaying movies to their small audiences. Emily can see Danielle walking towards a small gathering of about six people near the arcade, all centered around some type of large monitor with a barred off pad in front of it. Emily and Riku walk inside, an extremely fast mechanical beat overlayed with some grating falsetto lyrics blaring from the machine.

_"The burning storms and burning fire_

_All pale to my burning desire_

_On the wings of death_

_To my final breath_

_The darkest light will inspire"_

"What is this crap?" Emily asks, holding her hands to her ears. Riku chuckles a little at Emily's reaction.

"Hey, don't bash on Manticore!" some nebbish looking boy says, "Destiny Fields Burning is the fastest song ever at 1400 BPM!"

"No wonder it sounds like crap," Emily remarks, ignoring the boy's protests as she walks over to Danielle, "Hey, Danielle."

"Hi, Kiko," Danielle responds, making a half-turn to face Kiko. A loud crash sounds emanates from the machine's speakers, the display darkening as a game over splash screen showing statistics pops up. The dull boy standing on the pad apparently got 37 percent completion.

"Where's Greg?" Emily asks, not really caring about the answer. Danielle motions towards the machine, where Greg is talking with the boy on the pad. She can't really hear what's being said over the repetitious two bar loading screen 'music', but it looks like he's congratulating him. After the dullard walks off, Greg walks on the pad and starts navigating the song selection. He stops on something called 'Perpetual Motion', selecting '4/16 mode'. The audience starts murmuring.

"Don't worry," Greg says, giving a thumbs up as he starts the machine up, "I'm a professional."

The floor pad changes into a 4x4 grid, the screen changing to show four sections of arrow markers in a box shape in the center. Within a few seconds, a deluge of arrows swarm towards the center. Greg starts dancing in overdrive in time with the odd heavy metal song, starting with just his feet when only two of the lines are getting a stream. As the rest of the band joins in, Greg drops to the floor and does sort of a spider dance as the arrows swarm towards the center of the screen. Emily isn't too familiar with the mechanics of this game, but the bar at the top of the screen fills up pretty quickly and constant blue signs saying 'perfect!' pop up around where the arrows meet the inner box. Emily decides to ask for information to pass the time.

"What's all this?" Emily asks Danielle, faking confusion.

"This is Dance Maven," Danielle starts, "It's a dance simulator."

"I figured that part out," Emily starts, "But is he doing good?"

"Extremely," Danielle responds, turning towards the machine as the chorus starts. Emily figures out that each set of arrows corresponds to a particular instrument. The guitar arrows are linked sustains, with the drums being particularly complex singles. Emily can't quite hear what the other two instruments are supposed to be, but they're mostly lining up with the guitar. The gathering starts cheering him on as he keeps going, but Emily finds this incredibly boring.

To ease the boredom, Emily starts wandering towards even more thoughts of Riku. He doesn't look too interested in this game either, staring ahead blankly. No threat of having to learn this game. Why he brought Emily here, she can't fathom. He should be socializing with his two best friends. It doesn't even look like he wants to be here.

Emily turns her focus back on the game when she hears some some incredibly complex guitar solo, a wall of arrows hurtling towards the center of the screen. The bar at the top of the screen starts shrinking rapidly, hovering around near empty as a deluge of notes overwhelm the senses. After the solos finish, there's a round of cheers as the bar starts filling back up. Emily turns back to Danielle, who seems to be very excited.

"I don't get it," Emily starts, "This game makes no sense. How is that supposed to be possible for any human being?"

"It isn't," Danielle remarks flatly.

"Huh..." Emily says, spacing out a bit. She is definitely glad to not have to learn this. As the song finishes, everybody congratulates Greg. Emily offers a handshake along with everybody else.

"Thank you, everybody," Greg says, a tone of pride intermixed with exhaustion in his voice. He walks over to Emily and Danielle.

"That was incredible," Danielle gushes, "Even better than your Sakura 600 4/16."

"Yeah," Greg starts. Emily phases out again as they start talking about the game. She didn't really like the whole Dance Dance Revolution crowd and the Dance Maven crowd just seems even further over the top. However, she wants to like Greg and Danielle because Riku seems to like them and she needs to endear herself as much as possible. There must be some way she can make this bearable.

"Kiko?" Danielle says, bringing Emily back into reality once again. She's getting sick of these interruptions to her brain time.

"Yeah?" Emily responds. She doesn't like how Danielle and Greg are just staring through her. And where's Riku?

"We would love to see you try the game," Danielle says.

"Oh," Emily says, now feeling sort of uncomfortable, "I wasn't any good at Dance Dance Revolution in my world. I wouldn't be any good here."

"Come on, just for fun," Danielle says, smiling, "Everybody else left."

"Where's Riku?" Emily asks.

"He went to bed," Danielle states, "We're supposed to wake up in ten hours."

"Oh," Emily responds, "But it can't possibly be any later than 7:00."

"7:00?" Danielle says, a bit confused, "It's 19:00."

"Oh," Emily says, "Right. Sorry."

"Come on," Danielle says, "Dance for us. It will be fun."

"I... guess," Emily says, giving up and walking on the pad. Maybe just sucking really badly will get her off the hook in the future. She stands there for a minute, unable to figure out how to select anything. There are arrows with options next to them, but with the 4x4 grid, she has no clue which arrow is for what.

"Here, let me help," Danielle says, walking onto the pad and tapping some buttons. She selects something called 'The Determinator' and sets it on 1/4. She walks off the pad as the song loads.

"What is this?" Emily asks.

"You'll see," Danielle responds. The grid changes to a 3x3 with only four carrying arrows on them as game finishes loading, segueing into a very slow pop song with incredibly slow moving arrows crawling towards the bar at the top of the screen. She starts tapping the corresponding locations on the grid, a bit surprised at her accuracy. She's not even really putting much effort into it. The song gradually speeds up over time as the arrangements get more and more complex. She maintains near perfect accuracy, not even really thinking about it as it reaches four beats per second. Emily starts wondering about how she's able to do this without any practice. Did the angel give her dance skills as well for a laugh? After clearing an eight beat per second section, the song stops for a few seconds.

"Take that!" a masculine voice states with authority from the speakers, a swarm of arrows zooming towards the top as the song goes into overdrive. Emily tries her best to hang on, hitting only half of the notes. Moving her legs as fast as she is, she ends up knocking one leg off the floor with the other, falling down onto the pad with a resonate 'thud'. A second crash comes from the speakers shortly after.

"Are you okay?" Danielle asks, walking onto the pad and offering a hand.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Emily says, shoving herself off the ground and landing on her feet. She unwittingly slams her back against the guard rail, giving a surprised yelp.

"Are you sure?" Danielle asks, "That looked kind of nasty."

"I'll sleep it off," Emily responds, "Anyway, if it's okay, I'd like to go to bed as well." She thinks it's better to just get to bed now and save herself further humiliation.

"Okay," Danielle says, smiling, "I'll see you at breakfast."

"See you later," Greg responds.

"Later," Emily says, glad that this embarrassing escapade is over with. She doesn't even know how well she did in the game and doesn't care. As far as she's concerned, she was too crappy to stand.

Emily walks out of the arcade and up the stairs, going through her door after fumbling for her key card. She unlaces her dress and lets it fall to the ground, taking off her undergarments and tossing them aside as she walks into the bathroom. As she sees her reflection in the mirror, she decides to examine herself a bit more closely. She knows from that medical scanner earlier that she apparently has no defects whatsoever (a dubious proposition at best), but she's a bit wary of unfamiliar science like this. Every square inch she checks just impresses her more. No inconsistencies, no moles, no pimples, no cellulite, and no hair outside of head and pubic. She has to be good enough for Riku. She just needs to make him realize it. She goes to bed, hoping for a dream with him in it just like she used to have back in her old world.


	15. Poster Child

It's another beautiful day in Hometown, USA, and the kids are forced to spend it in school. Bummer. It's lunch time, but one girl decided to spend it hanging posters. She has her hair dyed green today, wearing a dark green and black camouflage style dress with a pair of black, frayed combat boots. The posters she is hanging are a home-made missing person's report, printed from an inkjet with a lot of color bleeding. The subject of the low resolution report is a brown haired teenage girl, some basic information coupled with an offered reward and a set of tabs on the bottom. As she staples the latest poster to a bulletin board in an empty hallway, she turns around to find herself face to face with a blonde cheerleader holding a bunch of posters.

"...Hello, Dana," the girl says, an icy tone in her voice as she glares right through her.

"Hi!" the cheerleader named Dana responds in a bubbly voice, "I forgot your name, but that happens when you're as popular and important as me."

"I never told you my name," the girl responds, the area around her developing liquid nitrogen, "What are you talking with me for? Shouldn't you be off planning how to get more favors out of the freshmen?"

"I remember now!" Dana responds, ignoring everything the other girl said, "You're Jamie Lerquin! How could I forget you with that morning announcement you made? It was very... poetic."

"What. Do. You. Want?!" Jamie says, pounding each syllable through as she starts to lose her patience.

"These posters aren't approved by the school," Dana says, a fake tone of authority in her voice as she holds up her stack, "I did you a favor by taking these down, but you have to stop now."

"...These are approved," Jamie says, pointing to a vague smudge mark in the corner of the poster, "The stamps just don't show up so well on this background."

"That could be anything," Dana says, her voice shifting to a haughty tone, "Your tricks don't fool me."

"What's the real reason for this?" Jamie asks, "You don't give a crap about the rules except when it suits you. What is it today? Decided that my turn is up for your bullying?"

"You want to know the real reason I'm here?" Dana asks, doing a spin while looking all around to make sure the coast is clear, "I hate Emily Tennenbaum. Despise her."

"...What?!" Jamie shouts, her face contorting with indignant rage.

"I don't want her to be found," Dana starts, lowering her voice, "She's a geek, a freak, a loser. Whoever kidnapped her did us all a favor and got her out of our hair. I'm glad somebody out there wants to make this school a better place."

"You monster!" Jamie shouts, "How can you say things like that?"

"You think her kidnapping makes her special?!" Dana shouts back, a vindictive tone in her voice, "Her kidnapping means NOTHING! News flash! People get kidnapped and DIE every day! You think Emily is special?! She is NOTHING!"

"You're terrible!" Jamie shouts, "You're not even human! How can you relish in somebody's disappearance and wish for their death?! You are a selfish, miserable, bottom feeding little cu-"

"Shut up!" Dana yells just in the nick of time, "You know I'm right! I'm always right! The tree you killed with your paper printing was worth more than Emily! Now hand over that pile of garbage!"

Dana snatches the posters out of Jamie's hands, tearing apart the whole stack. Jamie, her face glowing with rage, throws a punch with all her weight at the cheerleader. Dana casually steps to the side a little to avoid the punch, tossing the pieces of posters in the air in front of Jamie's face. As Jamie stumbles forward, Dana gives a quick kidney jab followed by an upwards palm to the nose. As Jamie stumbles back while grabbing onto her bleeding nose, Dana puts her fists in a ready stance as she starts shifting around defensively.

"Come on," Dana says in a mean-spirited, provocative voice. Jamie, overcome with emotion, runs forward with her hands in front of her in an attempt to grab the oppressor. Dana casually steps to the side, grabbing onto a lock of Jamie's hair and ripping it right out. Jamie gives out a loud yelp, grabbing at the bleeding area of her scalp. Dana chuckles a little, tossing the lock of hair to the side and resuming her stance. Jamie, unable to think beyond her unstoppable desire to destroy this girl, turns around and makes another rush with hands outstretched forward. Dana grabs both of Jamie's hands, the two of them locked in place for a few seconds. Dana starts repeatedly stomping down on Jamie's foot, a sickening crack emanating from it on the final stomp. Jamie starts giving out a painful scream, her arms going limp as she does her best to avoid falling over. Dana tosses the arms to the sides, delivering a punch right in Jamie's left breast. As Jamie starts stumbling backwards from the painful impact, Dana follows up with a knuckle point blow at her neck. Jamie starts coughing violently as Dana grabs onto her shirt and slams her back into the nearby wall, holding her up. Dana just smiles and chuckles for a little as Jamie keeps coughing, spraying the blood pouring down from her nose.

"What the hell is this?!" a masculine voice shouts from behind. Dana almost jumps in surprise. It's not even close to class time and this wing of the building shouldn't have anybody in it.

"Don't say anything," Dana says sadistically before letting go of Jamie. She forces an innocent expression on her face and turns around. Jamie collapses to the ground, grabbing onto her throat with both hands as she continues coughing and wheezing violently.

"Hi, Mr. Selacia!" Dana says, smiling and waving, "It's nice to see you." Selacia doesn't find the image of a blood splattered cheerleader acting cheerful convincing.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, Miss Billett?" Selacia says, staring with the fury of hell at the cheerleader.

"Jamie attacked me," Dana says, dropping the act and going into a more neutral state, "I was acting in self-defense."

"Self-defense my unmentionable," Selacia responds as he walks towards them, looking at the bleeding, coughing girl lying behind Dana, "You call this animalistic brutalization 'self-defense'?"

"My self-defense course taught me to keep hitting until the attacker can't hit back," Dana responds, flatly and coldly.

"You're really lucky I'm not allowed to call the police," Selacia says, stopping in front of Dana, "Go to the principal's office and tell them what you did. I'll be right there after I get Miss Lerquin to the nurse's office."

"It was self-defense," Dana says, not doing a great job of holding back her sadistic tone and expression.

"I'm sure the principal will rule in your favor," Selacia says, rolling his eyes and getting quite close to Dana with a stern look on his face, "I find your valley girl cheerleader routine neither endearing nor convincing. Don't even act like you don't know what I'm talking about, either. I know you're a lot smarter than you pretend to be. And don't think I don't know about your involvement in the other beatings. I read your permanent record and I am very good at reading between the lines and finding connections where sections were removed."

"I had no involvement in any of those other incidents," Dana says, doing a poor job of masking her sadistic cynicism.

"Yeah, sure, right," Selacia says, his voice oozing with sarcasm, "You might think you're untouchable because Senator Daddykins and your honorable uncle have the rest of the school board by their balls, but know this: if I so much as even THINK that you are involved in another one-sided beating like this, I will destroy you. If the school board refuses to expel you into juvenile hall, I will keep going higher in the judicial system until I find somebody that will listen. I will take this to the supreme court, if need be. I will give my story to CNN, the New York Times, and Michael Moore if I have to. And even if you somehow escape judicial punishment, you won't ever escape the court of public opinion. Your dreams of being a professional model? Gone in an instant. Good luck getting a job at Hooters."

"You can't make threats to a good student like me," Dana responds indignantly, "I'm going to get you fired for harassment."

"I'll take my chances," Selacia responds, stepping to Dana's side and bending down to help Jamie, "Principal's office. Now!" As Dana walks away, a bright white flash envelops the whole area.

**--**

Emily jolts upright as she awakens, drenched in cold sweat and hyperventilating. What a vivid nightmare. Seeing her best friend get pummeled like that brings nausea to her stomach. Nobody deserves to be treated like that, much less Jamie. Is Dana really this horrible a person? She's definitely shoved, tripped, and scratched people before, but to so brutally lay into somebody? It makes her want to puke seeing somebody fight so dirty and unrestrained. But most surprising is her sadistic history teacher breaking up the fight and actually _threatening_ Dana. What is this madness? Mr. Selacia loves to make people miserable. Why would he stop a fight like that? This definitely has to be a completely fabricated nightmare.

Emily rolls over to check the clock. 3:37. She decides to get up anyway, too frazzled by her dream to stand a chance of falling back asleep. She rolls out of bed, taking her white one piece nightgown off as she walks into the bathroom. She had never really noticed it before, but her hair practically maintains itself. No split ends, loose strands, or puffy pillow hair. It almost bugs her that she doesn't have to comb it, since she always got a sort of satisfaction out of it. After a nice shower, brushing her teeth, and some hair braiding, she's ready for the day. She decides to wear a dark blue shirt with blue jeans and tennis shoes today. If she's going to have to be physically active, she wants to be wearing something suited for it.

She grabs the black binder that somehow made its way into her room again and drapes herself over the couch. Without any clue how to work the television, it seems the best course of action is to finally read the book she's been putting off. It ends up being a lot more interesting than she initially thought. Within its pages, it has an extensive history on the Heartless and the people surrounding them, with detailed profiles on Xehanort, Sora, Riku, King Mickey, and others. What surprises Emily is just how much is new or otherwise completely different. In the games, the visits to the worlds were almost always rather shallow repeats of the plots from the movies they were based on, but apparently here, they're actually very, very different. For example, when Sora visited Agrabah the first time, Jafar had already been trapped and Genie was already free. Instead, Sora had to fight the forty thieves that were trying to get Jafar's lamp for their own purposes. The plot from the second game mostly lines up, though. Emily ends up so engrossed in reading the 'real' history of the world that she's startled by a couple clicks and a mechanical voice by the door.

"Ahd-mye-nye-strah-tye-veh deh-lye-veh-ree," the voice says, confusing the hell out of Emily. She walks over and opens the door, finding herself face to face with a robot holding a single clipboard in one arm and a stack of others in the space between its limbs on top. It extends the clipboard forward, offering it to Emily. After she takes it, the robot starts hovering to the next door as it grabs the next clipboard from its top. Emily closes the door, plopping herself onto the couch. The clipboard carries a single piece of paper, outlining her schedule:

Schedule for Kiko, First Semester

5:00 MTWRF - Wake Up

5:30 - 6:15 MTWRF - Breakfast (Dining Hall)

5:30 - 9:00 UA - Breakfast (Dining Hall)

6:30 - 8:45 MTWRF - Basic Training (Front Hall, Room 201)

9:00 - 11:15 MWF - Beginning Psionics (SW Tower, Room 414) (tentative)

9:00 - 11:15 TR - Tactical Awareness Conditioning (N Tower, Room 310)

11:30 - 12:15 MTWRF - Lunch (Dining Hall)

11:30 - 13:30 UA - Lunch (Dining Hall)

12:45 - 13:00 M - Adviser Meeting (Central Atrium, Room 802)

14:00 - 16:15 M - Beginning Combat Acrobatics (S Tower, Simulation Room 04)

14:00 - 16:15 T - Stealth Training (S Tower, Simulation Room 12)

14:00 - 16:15 W - Single Hand Firearms Training (S Tower, Simulation Room 14)

14:00 - 16:15 R - Knives Training (S Tower, Simulation Room 07)

14:00 - 16:15 F - Sniper Training (S Tower, Simulation Room 09)

17:00 - 17:45 MTWRF - Dinner (Dining Hall)

17:00 - 19:00 UA - Dinner (Dining Hall)

20:00 UMTWR - Lights Out

24:00 FA - Lights Out

All students will receive a handout from their adviser with their regimented weight and fitness training. A minimum of five hours must be logged in the weight room, distributed over a minimum of three days with a gap of at least 36 hours between each and a minimum of one hour and fifteen minutes each day. Additional days and times may be added at any particular time. None of these times may overlap within fifteen minutes of other classes.

Students are encouraged to spend as much time in the simulation chambers as they would like. Be certain to schedule each session at least an hour ahead of time through a computer terminal.

Weekends are treated as free days except when an event is assigned. There is no promise that any particular weekend will not have something scheduled on it. Friday at Lights Out is the deadline for a non-emergency event to be added to the schedule for the particular weekend. Please speak with your adviser if you require that a block of time be kept free for the weekend.

Emily is a bit surprised. She thought this was all going to be easy street, but the schedule is actually quite packed. Guess that's what a military academy is like. Emily goes back into her bedroom and checks the clock, finding that it's 5:20. She jogs out the door, worried that she's going to be late for breakfast.


	16. Being Awesome Is Such a Curse

Emily jogs into the dining room, the scent of scrambled eggs wafting through the air. The center square of tables are carrying a large assortment of breakfast meats and cereals, a large number of pitchers with white and orange liquids taking up its own side. The chef robots are back, making omelets to order. The chatter of a hundred people fill the room, each table near full capacity. Emily walks around the buffet, grabbing a portion of everything that smells good and placing it on the tray. She carries the tray back to the table from last night, sitting down next to Chou. Christopher 2, Ahmed, Greg, and Danielle are also present, but no Riku.

"Good morning, Kiko," Danielle says, looking up to her.

"Morning," Emily says, a tired tone in her voice.

"Morning," everybody else echoes in overlapping succession.

"Sleep well?" Ahmed asks, "You seem kind of tense."

"I'm fine," Emily responds, a bit confused by Ahmed's concern, "I just didn't expect the schedule to be this packed."

"If you insist," Ahmed responds, turning his attention back to the meal. Emily tries to eat some of her food, but she finds herself unable. She pokes and prods her stuff with a fork, arranging the food into shapes and patterns. After a few minutes of this, Christopher 2 decides to say something.

"You really need to eat something," Christopher 2 says, "It's going to be a long day."

"I don't know," Emily starts, sliding something that looks like a sausage under the square of green stuff, "I never have large breakfasts like this. I still feel queasy from my dream, too."

"So there is something bothering you?" Ahmed asks, a concerned tone in his voice.

"It's nothing," Emily starts, forcing herself to sound confident, "Just a silly dream."

"Dreams mean a lot, though," Ahmed starts, "You should tell me what you saw."

"Well, okay," Emily says, "As you know, my world was destroyed."

"I'm still sorry to hear that," Ahmed responds.

"I had a dream last night that took place in that world," Emily starts, her voice becoming a bit morose, "In it, my best friend was hanging missing person posters about me around the school. However, this really mean cheerleader took them all down and started harassing her. A fight broke out and my friend got horribly beaten. It was nauseating."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Ahmed responds in a sympathetic tone, "Maybe you should consult Professor Kern?"

"Who's that?" Emily asks.

"Psionics teacher," Ahmed starts, "She's big on dream interpretation."

"I have those classes," Emily starts, "I guess I could ask her when I go to them."

"I wish I could be more helpful," Ahmed says, a tone of shame in his voice.

"So..." Emily starts, searching for a different topic, "What's everybody's schedule?"

"You want us to read our schedules aloud?" Danielle asks.

"Oh," Emily says, realizing the impracticality of her suggestion, "Maybe each of us could pass our schedules to the person to our right?"

"That works," Danielle responds. They all pass their schedules to their right, sliding across the table at the ends. Emily sees Chou's schedule first:

Schedule for Chou Perltranicjavplusforbas, First Semester

5:00 MTWRF - Wake Up

5:30 - 6:15 MTWRF - Breakfast (Dining Hall)

5:30 - 9:00 UA - Breakfast (Dining Hall)

6:30 - 8:45 MTWRF - Basic Training (Front Hall, Room 201)

9:00 - 11:15 MWF - Beginning Defensive Magic (NW Tower, Room 202)

9:00 - 11:15 TR - Tactical Awareness Conditioning (N Tower, Room 310)

11:30 - 12:15 MTWRF - Lunch (Dining Hall)

11:30 - 13:30 UA - Lunch (Dining Hall)

13:30 - 13:45 W - Adviser Meeting (Central Atrium, Room 806)

14:00 - 16:15 MWF - Beginning Field Medic Training (S Tower, Simulation Room 03)

14:00 - 16:15 T - Emotional Conditioning (SW Tower, Room 112)

14:00 - 16:15 R - Beginning Polearms (S Tower, Simulation Room 02)

17:00 - 17:45 MTWRF - Dinner (Dining Hall)

17:00 - 19:00 UA - Dinner (Dining Hall)

20:00 UMTWR - Lights Out

24:00 FA - Lights Out

"Interesting last name," Emily says, banishing thoughts about how it would be pronounced lest it drive her mad, "What does 'Emotional Conditioning' mean?"

"I don't want to be a wimp," Chou says, softly and quietly, "I'm not as sensitive as the other Feylinus, but I'm useless if I cry every time something bad happens."

"Not... as... sensitive...?" Emily asks, her eye twitching at the logic bomb of a whole species managing to be even _more_ histrionic and somehow function.

"Most of my species won't have anything to do with the outside world," Chou explains, "Most people are really mean."

"I hear that," Emily responds. She slides the clipboard across the table, taking the clipboard from her left. Seems Ahmed is an empathic sword fighter. Boring. Another two cycles and she finds that Danielle and Greg are both offensive magic with a focus on precision mass destruction. Neato. At least it explains why he was able to cut through her crap. Another cycle and she finds that Christopher 2 is going to be a vehicle specialist. Ho, hum. A class on proper ways to ram vehicles makes Emily not want to be his passenger, certainly. One last cycle brings Emily's schedule back to her. While everybody is in the same Basic Training, only Chou and Ahmed share any other classes with Emily. So much for that idea.

"This is all very interesting," Emily says, , "Thank you, everybody."

"No problem," Danielle says, sounding a bit wary of all of this.

"We're in the same class, Greg," Ahmed says.

"The fencing one?" Greg asks, "I saw that."

"Yes," Ahmed says, "What style are you going for?"

"I don't care," Greg starts, "I just didn't want to get stuck using guns or polearms as my weapon proficiency, so I put down swords."

"I see you as somebody wielding a rapier," Ahmed says, "Thin, easy to swing, good reach, light blade. Lacks mass, but with a schedule like your's, a sword probably isn't that necessary."

"Yeah," Greg responds, "What are you going to specialize in, Ahmed?"

"Well..." Ahmed starts, presumably going into a detailed history of his swordsmanship. Emily tunes out, a bit sleepy and unconcerned about the finer details of Ahmed's sword obsession. She's starting to have doubts about this lifestyle. It seemed so glamorous at first, but with six hours and forty five minutes of exhausting daily classes ahead of her, it just seems so excessive. Emily can't help but wonder how Kairi is going to survive this. Sure, she has good friends in Sora and Riku... where's Riku?

"...and that's why while I like the scimitar, the falchion is the best choice on the modern battlefield," Ahmed finishes.

"Ah," Greg says, not sounding too enthused. Everybody else is sort of glazed over, pretending to be paying attention but obviously not caring. Emily is thankful that for once, she is not the only one not paying any attention and didn't have to be dragged out of la-la land.

"If I may ask," Christopher 2 starts, "You have classes in every form of bladed combat available, but also Psionics with an emphasis on Empathy. How do you intend to mix these?"

"I don't understand the question," Ahmed responds.

"Look at it from this angle," Christopher 2 starts, "The Heartless don't have emotions or really any other brain functions. They're just walking sacks of destructive instincts."

"The Heartless aren't the only things we might have to fight," Ahmed responds, "There are also the Nobodies."

"Nobodies lack emotion, too," Christopher 2 starts, "They constructed artificial Kingdom Hearts because they wanted to restore their emotions. Didn't you read the history?"

"I skimmed a bit," Ahmed admits, "We still might have to fight normal people."

"A trained soldier has two emotions," Christopher 2 starts, "Rage and determination. They convert everything else into those two. I don't see what use there is in either reading or attempting to influence those emotions."

"...This school requires multiple skill sets and I just happen to be empathic," Ahmed responds, flatly and directly, "I would have selected nothing but combat, but the registration doesn't allow that."

"Wait, you got to choose your own schedule?" Emily asks, feeling even more out of the loop.

"Of course we did," Christopher 2 says, "...you didn't?"

"No," Emily says, "I just filled out some form asking me some vague stuff and they gave me this schedule."

"Did you join at the last minute or something?" Christopher 2 asks.

"Yes, I did," Emily responds.

"That might explain it," Christopher 2 says.

"I should be mad," Emily starts, "But to be honest, I don't know what classes I would have taken, anyway."

"Your schedule gives a pretty specific focus, though," Christopher 2 starts, "Infiltrate, assassinate, escape. Yet, you talk about how you don't know what you'd take? Why is that?"

"Well..." Emily starts, "Did I mention how I got here on this planet?"

"You mentioned being sent here after the Heartless destroyed your world," Christopher 2 starts, "But not any specifics beyond that."

"Well," Emily starts, "After I got sucked into the black cloud, I ended up in this place... or my soul ended up there... or my heart... or whatever. Some angel or god or whatever gave me some choices on a new body, but ended up forcing me to be an Assassin. Then I got dumped off in Radiant Garden."

"Okay," Christopher 2 starts, lowering his voice, "Let me get this straight: After being absorbed by the Heartless, you ended up in an dark empty world with a bunch of glowing circular platforms, right?"

"Yes," Emily says, thankful that she's now able to get some answers.

"Your choice of the term 'angel', though..." Christopher 2 starts, "Did you actually meet with a Seraph?"

"I don't know what that is," Emily responds, "I just met with some guy in a white robe."

"Was it the single most attractive thing you saw?" Christopher 2 asks, "Did it drive all thoughts out of your head as a sense of longing and desire overcame you?"

"...yes, it was," Emily responds, feeling a bit embarrassed.

"Okay, this question is kind of stupid because of celestial policies," Christopher 2 starts, "But did it touch you in any way?"

"Yes, it did," Emily says, "I don't understand why this is important. It doesn't seem so except-"

"Okay, this is really important," Christopher 2 starts, "If my constant browsing of the Interpedia is right, this means you're a Celestial being."

"But I seem human enough," Emily says, holding her arms in front of her and analyzing them in depth, "I mean sure, I seem to have been made out of the best parts. No stretch marks, no moles, not even any body hair..."

"...except for your head of luscious, self-combing hair," Christopher 2 finishes, dryly.

"I guess," Emily says, "What's wrong? You're acting like I'm infected or something."

"You sort of are," Christopher 2 starts, "How many people know about this?"

"I don't know..." Emily starts, "I told Leon, Yuffie, Aerith, Tifa, Riku, Sora, Kairi, and you guys."

"Did you tell them you were touched specifically?" Christopher 2 asks.

"No," Emily says, a bit of blush coming to her face, "That moment was, um... kind of personal."

"Okay," Christopher 2 starts, "First order of business: don't tell anybody else you were ever in the angelic domain."

"Please tell me why this is so bad," Emily starts, "You make it sound like I have the Black Plague or something."

"You also came from another dimension, didn't you?" Christopher 2 asks.

"Yes..." Emily responds, "Please-"

"Here's the deal," Christopher 2 starts, "You have Celestial Tint. There isn't anything wrong with it specifically, but it is not something you want to parade around. If people know you have it, they will idolize you, envy you, and possibly try to control you. Regardless, if this knowledge gets out, you won't be left alone."

"But... why..." Emily starts, "I'm not special. I'm just a normal person. Dr. Whatshisname even told me that I'm completely natural and not as good as all the magic-based people."

"You're linked with a Seraph," Christopher 2 starts, "And, by extension, other dimensions. All interdimensional magic requires somebody with Celestial Tint and there are a lot of people that want to use that. Technically, the angels should have stopped giving people tint after the Cult of the Azimuth disaster, but I guess you slipped through the cracks."

"This is giving me a headache," Emily remarks, "I have all this... stuff forced on me. I get sent to this world, forced into having all these assassin related skills, and even get this random, uncontrollable psychic ability. Then I find out that I have 'Celestial Tint', whatever that really means. But most of all, I just have so much focus from so many people." Emily refrains from adding 'except from Riku, the only person I care about in this world.'

"This is why you need to keep your origin a secret," Christopher 2 starts, "Tint will make people gravitate towards you, but so long as you keep it secret, you shouldn't be too disruptive."

"Shouldn't that machine Dr. Whatshisname used showed that I had this?" Emily asks.

"It probably did," Christopher 2 starts, "Doctors have something called the 'unmentionables'. They're not allowed to talk about Celestial Tint, amongst other topics."

"I wish this condition gave me something more useful than clear skin and self-combing hair," Emily remarks, "Magic powers, super strength, super speed, mind reading, or something. Instead, I get to be the 'best normal human' that Dr. Whatshisname ever tested, which is like being the best Chutes and Ladders player. It doesn't really allow me to fight on the same level as most of the people here."

"I'm normal," Christopher 2 remarks, "Most of the people here are. Also, if you have any sort of precognition, you're not exactly fighting on the same level as a regular person, so you're sort of contradicting yourself."

"I didn't even get my face fixed," Emily says, holding up her spoon to try and discern her reflection, "Clear skin, perfect hair, boobs of steel... but I'm still freakishly tall and my face still looks the same."

"Kiko, I'm going to give you a suggestion," Christopher 2 starts, "I'm just speaking for myself here, but I'm sure a lot of people agree with me."

"Yeah?" Emily asks, curious about why Christopher 2 is giving such a sudden suggestion.

"Shut up," Christopher 2 says in a fairly blunt and direct but still semi-respectful way, "Seriously. You're just complaining for the sake of complaining now."

"But this is serious," Emily says, "I was forced into this skill set and wasn't given the body I actually wanted."

"Wouldn't that be nice?" Christopher 2 remarks in a deadpan manner, "To be able to choose before you're born how you will turn out. Select a height, weight, a whole bunch of superpowers, and just be utterly without random fault or defect."

"That's what I'm talking about," Emily says, "If this process is common enough that there can be an 'Interpedia' article on it, there's no reason that I should have been given the short end of the stick like this."

"That article had all of three contributors," Christopher 2 explains, "0.000000003 percent out of 600 quadrillion people just makes it seem like a lot of people. Did you even complain to the Seraph as well about this?"

"I guess I sort of did..." Emily says, "I don't know. It was sort of mean to me, but then 'gave me a gift' with the hopes that it would 'be fired'."

"It probably gave you Celestial Tint as an ironic punishment," Christopher 2 says, "But anyway, just... don't tell anyone else about your origin or complain about not being good enough any more. It's not going to win you friends to act like being so much better than the vast majority of people in the universe is somehow cursed. Think about how you'd feel if somebody that is way better than you is complaining about how much it sucks to be them."

"I'd want to slap her... oh," Emily says, realizing that she now wants to slap herself, "What should I say when people ask where I come from, then?"

"Just tell them that you fell through the Corridors of Darkness or something," Christopher 2 says, "It's not that far from the truth."

"Thank you," Emily says, "I'm glad you were able to give me so much exposition."

"You're welcome," Christopher 2 says, "I'm not sure if it's just the tint, but you seem like a nice enough person. Whiny, but nice."

"Where's Riku?" Emily says, choosing now to be the best time to ask without it seeming like she's shafting the group.

"He's having breakfast with King Mickey," Christopher 2 explains, "He had something that needed attention."

"I hope it's about those White Stars," Emily says. She decides to try to look for them, noticing with her peripheral vision that everybody else at the table are holding quiet conversations with each other. Emily realizes it would have been silly to expect them to just sit quiet for all of this.

"Well..." Christopher 2 says, "Not to cut you off, but it's just about time for class."

"It can't be that late," Emily says, looking around for the clock, "It's only... 6:09... where did the time go?"

"Elsewhere," Christopher 2 says, "Let's head out. We can talk on the way if you still want some more advice."

"Okay," Emily says, pushing away from the table and getting up. Everybody else follows suit, walking side by side towards the exit as a couple robots hover in to clear their table.


	17. Proper Punching Etiquette

The group of six walk outside of the dining hall, cutting across the circular hallway and walking across the bridge towards the south tower. As they enter, they find themselves in a narrow hallway leading towards a big inner room. The grey walls carry portraits of various people, none of whom Emily is able to recognize. This hallway goes on for about 50 meters before opening up into another atrium with a diameter of about 400 meters. At the top of of the cylindrical room is a skylight with a spider web style grid of support bars. Similar to the Central Atrium, this room has a helix of walkways spiraling to the top. Every third of a circle has a door, each with a large placard showing a number above and three colored dome lights vertically aligned to the left. From the group's entry point, the helix walkway goes up five circles over five stories, with an additional twenty stories and circles ending at a glowing floor of circuitry protected by a thick layer of plexiglass below them. At the 'central' level, there are two bathrooms, a control room, a program disc archive, and a hallway to another door to the outside directly opposite of the other entry hall. The central level has a thicker walkway kept even, with the helix cutting through it with a sharp incline in a quarter of the circle.

"Why is everything so big here?" Emily asks as they start walking around the circle, "It takes forever to get anywhere."

"You know the expression 'work with what you have'?" Christopher 2 asks.

"I guess I do now," Emily answers.

"This castle was the best option that King Mickey had available," Christopher 2 explains, "It's large enough to accommodate everybody, already wired with advanced technology, and heavily guarded. Yes, it's large and impractical in design, but that is being used to its benefit as well. They could easily have Basic Training in one of the towers, but they decided to hold it about as far away as possible. This is probably to get everybody to stay in shape."

"May I call you Mr. Exposition?" Emily asks, realizing that if she's going to have to deal with a number of people with a similar name, she should start assigning nicknames.

"I don't understand," Christopher 2 responds as the group starts walking through a grey hallway just like the one before.

"You know a lot of stuff," Emily starts, "And we need a way to tell you apart from the other Christopher Jones, so I think you should be Mr. Exposition."

"I'd prefer my real name, thank you," Christopher 2 responds.

"In my mind, I've been thinking of you as Christopher 2," Emily says, "But that just gets confusing, so I think you need a nickname."

"I like my name as it is," Christopher 2 responds as everybody walks through the door. They emerge outside on a large stone platform with four short bridges leading to cylindrical brass frames. The one on the far right has an elevator cage docked in it, a slight dome to its white marble floor with a gold border rim.

"Don't you have a middle name or something?" Emily asks as they start boarding the elevator.

"Nope," Christopher 2 responds. Emily decides to not talk about it any more. She'll have to figure something out. After everybody finishes boarding the elevator, a brass gate drops down on either side of the dividing gap as its mechanism produces a high pitched metallic clanging noise. The elevator briskly descends, the wind rippling around the cage. Emily hadn't taken the elevator down before, so it was a bit of a surprise when she almost felt like she was going to be launched upwards. Outside of Chou, nobody else seem taken aback by the sudden velocity.

"Anyone else think this elevator is broken?" Emily asks, pushing her shirt down to prevent it from puffing up. Chou wasn't too lucky with her gown, with Emily quickly looking away as she starts to see it flip up.

"Four elevators, two hundred people," Christopher 2 says, "And everybody goes to the front hall after breakfast. We wouldn't want the elevators to get too congested."

"That makes sense," Emily says as they reach their destination in record time. The bottom platform is made of the same material, but instead of being limited to the single tower, it has a ringed walkway that goes around to the other five towers. Emily still can't help but wonder why the bottom side of the towers have to be accessed by going through the south tower to an external walkway, but the top side requires going into the center. It would have been much easier if the towers allowed full access. Highly impractical design, to be sure. The gates on either end of the dividing line slide up with the same metallic clanging, allowing the elevator's passengers to disembark. Emily walks along with the group as they go through a grey stone archway corridor. Emily then has a realization as to a new conversation topic.

"Hey, Greg," Emily says, shifting her position in the group to get near him.

"Yeah?" Greg responds.

"I've been wondering... how did you do that stuff last night?" Emily asks.

"What stuff?" Greg asks.

"That game you played," Emily starts as the group enters the Central Atrium and starts walking down the spiral, "Danielle says it's impossible for any human being and I can't help but wonder how you managed to do it."

"Watch this," Greg says, hovering up into the air and tilting around for a few seconds before dropping back on the ground and resuming his walk. Emily would almost be surprised by it if she hadn't already become desensitized by all the weirdness.

"What does being able to fly have anything to do with playing that game?" Emily asks.

"A regular person would fall face first to the ground," Greg responds, "If not horribly sprain themselves from such rapid movement. I defy physics."

"Why did they include that if nobody can finish it without magic?" Emily asks, "It's like they're making fun of the players."

"It's meant for two people," Greg replies.

"Oh," Emily responds. She decides not to pursue this line of thought any further. She doesn't think that she can really relate to Greg at this rate. He not only plays a style of video game of which Emily is not much of a fan, but also on a scale that Emily simply could never imitate. It still bugs her that she got as far as she did. She settles on a theory that it's just a natural consequence of being faster, more coordinated, etc. Obviously, her lack of familiarity with proper dance skills would complicate things if it got too fast, but this is the best she can come up with. She'd much rather not think about it any further than this.

The group finishes walking down the spiral, heading through the yellow hallway with statues. Emily is reminded that how bothersome Square-Enix's misrepresentation of the masquerade in the games really is. As it turns out, the knowledge of other worlds isn't so much a universal secret as it is just limited to the highest officials within each world's government, each with its own set of regulations in how to handle the knowledge. Most worlds don't even choose to keep it secret from their general public. At least it was accurate that Sora and company weren't allowed to give the information to new people unless absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, Square-Enix chose to represent worlds that were both very quirky and outside of a couple of them, stripped all their knowledge of the outside universe. Emily's out of character knowledge is getting less useful with every new thing she learns.

The group walk into the main hall, up the stairs, and into room 201. Simple and direct, emerging into the mostly vacant room. Three people that are below Emily's notice are already present, including Christopher 1. He gives a slight nod towards his other namesake, which Emily didn't see the reaction of. It takes a second before Emily notices that there is a duffel bag beside the entrance and two lines of shrink-wrapped books on the floor, each spaced apart to correspond to where people will be standing.

"What should we do with these clipboards?" Emily asks.

"Just place it on the ground somewhere," Christopher 2 responds as he tosses his clipboard into a corner of the room.

"Okay," Emily says, deciding to hang onto it for now. She walks up to a book and picks it up, reading the large overlayed note that covers the entirety of the upside.

Do not open until instructed. Place back down in its original position until instructed otherwise.

Emily decides against breaking the rule this vague note gives, carefully placing it back down on the floor in its original position. Emily notices a deluge of people file in, including her darling Riku. She was starting to get antsy after he failed to show up to last night's event and breakfast, but everything is right in the world now that her future boyfriend is here. She subtly walks over to him, lining up beside him to his left and placing her clipboard on the ground near the book.

"Good morning, Riku," Emily says in about as cheerful a tone as she can. Riku does a half-turn to face her, a look of passive disinterest on his face.

"Good morning, Kiko," Riku responds.

"How was King Mickey?" Emily asks.

"He's doing fine," Riku responds, "He just wanted to make sure I want to go through with this. I told him after all I've been through, I can't go to regular school."

"Yeah, I can't see you in regular school," Emily says, "...wait, the Destiny Islands have a school?"

"Of course," Riku responds, "We're not slackers, after all."

"Oh, yeah," Emily says, remembering the cutscene with Kairi in a school uniform. It started to make sense as something more than just innocent fanservice now. The last few people file in, taking up positions in the lines. Within mere seconds of the fortieth person taking his position, the door slams open with a loud thud to reveal the same man that menaced them the previous day. Everybody assumes the stances that they had the previous day.

"Now that's what I like to see!" drill sergeant Williams starts as he goes down the line and smacks out the inconsistencies in postures with his riding crop, "Too bad I had to put markers for your simian brains to comprehend it! Now, as you may or may not have noticed, there are books near every one of you. Before you pick them up and unwrap them like an impatient child on Christmas morning expecting the latest mind-rotting video game, I would like to applaud you all for wearing regular clothing." Sarge stops in front of Chou. "Except for Squishy, here, who saw fit to wear the same dress as yesterday. Why did you wear this, Squishy?"

"Um... sir, I have nothing else to wear, sir?" Chou responds, giving a weak smile in an attempt to get approval.

"Good answer," sarge says, oozing sarcasm, "As I mentioned yesterday, I can't force anybody here to change their clothing. But since I like Squishy, I'm going to have her give a demonstration. Squishy, walk to the demonstration area."

"...sir, yes, sir," Chou responds, walking towards the central position between the two lines. Sarge walks to the end of the lines near the door, facing towards Chou.

"An enemy is running towards you and your arms are disabled," sarge starts, "Show me what you do."

"Sir, I don't understand, sir," Chou responds, confused.

"You're carrying something in both hands by your sides," sarge says, "Something you can't drop or put away. What do you do?"

"Um..." Chou says, thinking for a few seconds. She then does a slow, wimpy arcing kick towards the metaphorical shins.

"If the enemy even noticed your wimpy kick," sarge starts, "they fell on top of you and proceeded to smash your head into the pavement! Higher, Squishy!"

"Sir, yes, sir," Chou says, weakly. She performs another arcing kick that goes up to a little under knee level of the metaphorical attacker. Sarge doesn't look pleased in the slightest.

"Not high enough," Sarge says, "Aim for the stomach."

"Sir, I can't kick that high, sir," Chou says.

"Try me," Sarge says. Chou keeps trying to kick higher, straining against her dress in the process. "Higher! Higher!" Chou eventually figures out that a two point bend gets better results instead of a direct arc swing, but her kicks are still amateurish at best. Right when she finally gets her foot up to stomach level, a loud ripping noise emanates from her dress. Several seams burst in succession, the front of the skirt tearing and pealing backwards. Emily quickly averts her eyes when she sees flesh under the failing skirt, noticing that most of the other people are looking away as well.

"Eyes forward, maggots!" sarge says, with everybody reluctantly looking back towards him. Chou is holding the separated parts of her skirt together, her face tinted a deep scarlet and wet with tears that she is trying to hold back. Sarge unzips the duffel bag by the door and pulls out some dark green cotton garments, walking over to Chou.

"My... favorite... dress..." Chou sputters out, fighting back the urge to break out in tears.

"I planned ahead for this," sarge starts, lightly tossing the bundle of clothes on top of Chou, "Go change outside, insect-girl."

"But... sir, what if I'm seen, sir?" Chou says.

"It's class time," sarge responds, "Nothing but robots in the hallways and even those would not be perverted enough to find _you_ attractive. Get to it."

"...sir, yes, sir," Chou says, scooping the clothing off of the ground around her and slowly getting up. She does a slow crouching walk, holding the skirt together as best as she can as she walks outside of the room. Sarge takes his position back at the entrance, giving an exaggerated sigh.

"In case you missed the point of this like the doddering children you are," sarge starts, "Frilly dresses are poor combat outfits. You want mobility first, protection second, and appearance as a very distant third, preferably in a way that makes you harder to snipe. Squishy here didn't get it, obviously. The Heartless are not going to carefully take off your clothes before ripping your entrails out and limiting yourself like Squishy did will only get you killed." As sarge finishes, Chou walks back into the room, wearing dark green shorts and a dark green tight shirt with the four pink capelike things protruding from the borders. Emily hadn't even noticed that Chou is nearly flat chested underneath her former elaborate gown, which she holds in her left hand.

"Sir, what should-" Chou says.

"Back in line, maggot!" sarge says, gently taking the gown away from her. As Chou files back into the line in her position opposite of and three positions to the right of Emily, sarge walks over to the duffel bag and drops the gown to its side. He turns around, resuming his speech.

"Now that we're all _finally_ ready," sarge says, sarcastically, "Pick up the books in front of you and unwrap them." Everybody in the room complies, a couple people getting a surprise when the sections fall apart and spread on the ground. Emily almost spills her's, but she quickly catches the stray pieces before they hit the ground. The cover of the first piece says 'Geurimja Jumeok Volume I: Honor Code', with a small bit of text saying 'Shadow Fist' underneath the first two words of the title.

"As you may or may not have figured out," sarge starts, walking towards Emily, "This is the manual to everything I will be teaching you. We will start with the first volume, so put the other parts back on the floor. Butch will open for us, since he needs this class the most."

"Sir, what are you asking, sir?" Emily asks, placing the other seven sections of the book on the floor.

"Read the book for us," sarge says, a condescending tone in his voice. Emily opens the book and thinks about how to start for a few seconds.

"Sir, wel-" Emily starts.

"Does it say my name in the book?" sarge asks.

"Sir, no, sir," Emily responds, going back into the book, "Welcome to the Geurimja Jumeok school of martial arts. In this curriculum, you-"

"Skip that paragraph," sarge says.

"Before you can learn how to employ these tactics, you need to learn to respect your opponent," Emily continues, "This first volume will detail the proper code of honor inherent to the Geurimja Jumeok practitioner. Everything from conflict aversion to honorable conduct during battle to the proper way to handle an opponent's surrender will be covered. Along-"

"That's enough," sarge says, grabbing the book out of Emily's hands as he resumes pacing back and forth, "By the way, Butch, you owe me 100 push-ups from yesterday. Get to it." Emily, feeling a bit uncomfortable, gets on the ground and starts doing push-ups. At least her gym teachers never let her do 'girl push-ups', so she didn't have to worry about being corrected in her procedure. "Now, who here knows what we're training to fight? Anybody? How about you, Statistic?"

"Sir, the Heartless, sir!" Christopher 1 says.

"Correct," sarge responds, "Now, everybody, can the Heartless be reasoned with?"

"Sir, no, sir!" nearly everybody shouts in response.

"Going to have to do better than that to graduate from my class!" sarge shouts, "Now, will the Heartless ever hold back?"

"Sir, no, sir!" everybody shouts.

"Will the Heartless ever surrender?" sarge asks.

"Sir, no, sir!" everybody shouts.

"With that in mind, let me show you how applicable this chapter is," sarge says, placing his riding crop through a belt loop and tossing the book up in the air. As it falls back down, he does a quick jab right through it. For the briefest of microseconds, it almost appears as though he put his hand clean through it before it explodes into a thousand shredded bits of paper. He retracts his his fist, going back into his normal stance and taking his riding crop back out. He starts walking back to the duffel bag.

"At the moment, you are all still maggots crawling around in the decaying stomach of a roadkill skunk," sarge says, taking out a couple more pieces of clothing and tossing them aside before picking up the now empty bag, "Therefore, you are incapable of understanding anything involving morality. I will reserve this chapter for the end of the term when you have graduated into sentient beings. Place your useless chapter in the bag as I walk by." Sarge walks along the lines, collecting everybody's books. After he finishes his rounds, he pulls a handheld communicator from a pants pocket and presses a button, placing it back afterwards. He walks back to the door, dropping the duffel bag by it. After placing the nearby clothing on top of it and pulling a code chart from one of the bag's pockets, the door opens to reveal a hover robot. It takes sarge a second to find the relevant marking on the robot before he can allow it to scan the chart. As the robot starts to pick up the duffel bag, he tosses the chart on it and walks back towards Emily.

"93, 94, 95..." sarge starts counting, lining up with Emily's count. Just as Emily reaches 99, sarge steps onto her back and stands there. Emily tries as hard as she can to push herself up, but her strength fails her. She continues straining against gravity, starting to feel quite a bit of pain from all the concentrated weight going into her chest. After about half a minute of futile struggle, she stops trying.

"I see Butch is just as useless as the rest of you, predictably," sarge starts, getting off of Emily's back. Emily lies prone for a few seconds to breathe before doing one more push-up and standing up. She resumes a ready stance, holding back a couple coughs as she re-orients herself. Sarge pulls out a pocket watch from his vest pocket and checks it before resuming his lecture.

"We have 118 minutes left," sarge says, "And since I only just gave you maggots your books, you obviously don't know jack. However, we are not going to have a powwow like some of the other classes. Instead, we are going to do more drills. I know you all went through a physical before joining the school, but I never trust those namby pamby doctors with their fancy light machines and their Ph. Ds. I hope you all ate hearty because you are all going to need it. Now, get on the ground to prepare for push-ups." As everybody else gets down in preparation for even more push-ups, Emily just stands there with a look of disbelief on her face. Sarge gets right up to her.

"Sir, I just did a hundred push-ups, sir," Emily states.

"Oh, Butch did a hundred push-ups," sarge responds, with even more sarcasm, "Guess what? We're doing a hundred more! On the ground, maggot." Emily decides against arguing and drops to the ground.

"From now on, all drills are synchronized," sarge starts, "Everybody will do the same actions in rhythm. Think of it as a grand dance. Because you are still maggots, the current synchronized time is nine tenths of a second. 100 push-ups will take 90 seconds exactly. I'll start it off." Sarge starts clapping his hands in rhythm. "Up, down, up, down, up, down, up, begin." Everybody starts doing push-ups in sync, with sarge seizing his clapping after about ten push-ups. Emily goes along, maintaining the rhythm. She gets a bit of surprise from seeing Chou doing the same push-ups, although she doesn't look too comfortable. It doesn't take too much thought before she realizes that expecting Chou to be physically incapable of this when the school has such high standards is a bit silly. She might be small and meek, but she still had to have passed the physical. Right at the ninety second mark, everybody finish their push-ups and stand up.

"Good show," sarge says, "Even maggots can manage nine tenths, though. By the end of your tenure here, you will be doing push-ups twice as fast. Now, we're going on a little jog. Follow me." Everybody follows sarge out of the room, gathering in partial lines without much of any idea as to how to organize themselves.

"Standard formation is eight columns by five rows," sarge says, turning to face the group, "Well? Get to it!" Emily watches Riku in particular as people start moving into positions. After Riku takes a spot in the front row, Emily quickly move in to fill the position behind him while cutting somebody off in the process. The group finishes organizing itself, all facing towards sarge.

"Now, for the standard jogging rhythm," sarge says, jogging in place, "Left, right, left, right, left, right, all together now." Everybody starts jogging in place for about ten seconds before sarge starts turning around.

"Forward!" sarge says, jogging forward. Everybody follows suit, maintaining their formation. As sarge leads the group along the mezzanine towards the stairs, Emily starts staring at Riku's perfectly formed backside. Oh, how boring this would be if it weren't for her idol providing some much needed eye candy. The group doesn't take too long to jog around the mezzanine, down the stairs, and around into the hallway towards the Central Atrium. Emily shuts her brain off to fantasize some more about Riku. Oh, the pleasures to be had with her darling Riku. Without him, this school would suck. The life of a professional superhero seems like it sucks when it involves so much training and no extra lives or continues. However, with her favorite character within reach, it's all worthwhile. She wished all her life to get with Riku and now, here she is. All she has to do is convince him that she is the one for him. She wishes that she weren't so tall, but at least Riku is an inch taller. She needs to figure out what he wants in a woman, though.

A gust of wind brings Emily's attention off of Riku's butt and back to her surroundings. She starts to feel a bit antsy about the fact that they are on the lower external ring linking the six towers. She knows that there are safety precautions in place everywhere and that it takes quite a bit of effort to even get over the side, but she still can't help but think of the possibility of becoming a red crater in the ground. She manages to suppress her fear and keep jogging in time with everybody else. With the anxiety of the ringed walkway in mind, she can't segue back into her earlier fantasy. She instead decides to look around a little to try and orient herself a bit. The architecture of the castle still confuses her a little. The maps only really seem to cover about half of the possible space that the castle has. The basement is conspicuously absent and the small inner towers have no access point listed. At least it's something Emily can explore, even if Leon and company supposedly cleaned everything out.

The group jogs back inside after a full circle, going back into the Central Atrium. Emily starts trying to think of connections to the unused portions of the castle. Her knowledge from the video games is rather useless here because of not only how much artistic license Square took in adaption, but also because Square contradicted their designs between the two games. Emily instead approaches this from a logical standpoint. The inner towers have to be accessed from the central building due to the single-floor connection offered by the six primary towers. The eighth floor of the Central Atrium is probably the best bet, since the offices on that floor are all quite tiny compared to the sections in the lower floors. Emily needs to get back to her black binder to try to figure out potential entrance points.

Emily segues back into more fantasy about Riku as the group starts running through the hallway back into the main hall. Time and distance seem to fly by, with Emily barely registering the Front Hall, or the Main Courtyard. As the group runs into the hedge maze, Emily starts to wonder about what Sora and Kairi must think of her. They seemed fine with her, but they could just be acting polite. What she needs to figure out is what they really think of her. Emily starts wondering what she could say to Riku that would indirectly get the answers needed. After thinking of it from a few directions, she decides that the best course of action is to just let things come as they will. As Emily phases back to reality, she notices that the group is stopping in a central garden area of the hedge maze. There are a couple raised patches of ground with a mass of flowers on them, a makeshift border of small stones around them. In the center of the area is a marble fountain with cascading waterfalls, a brass bench in front of it. Two brass statues of people Emily doesn't recognize are on each side of the fountain, each on top of a short marble pillar. Sarge turns around while jogging in place, stopping and taking his pocket watch out for a few seconds.

"It seems we still have twenty five minutes," sarge starts, "So we're going to end with one more drill: jumping jacks. Anybody here not know what they are?" Chou meekly raises her hand, a look of dread at the expected censure on her face. "Of course Squishy doesn't know. Watch me." Sarge starts doing jumping jacks, counting with each movement. "One, two, one, two, one, two, begin."

As Emily does jumping jacks for what feels like an eternity, she stares at Riku some more. Emily can't help but feel that Riku is even more attractive in person. Sure, her imagination running wild idealized him, but just the fact that Riku is everything she saw in the games while being flesh and blood and within her reach makes him the best thing to happen in her life. With his luscious silver hair, perfectly formed frame, his aquamarine eyes with that scintillating glow, and all the other small details, he is everything Emily could have hoped for. It makes the ten minutes of jumping jacks more bearable. Sarge stops the group, pulling his watch out to check the time.

"Guess what maggots?" sarge starts, "I'm feeling generous, so I'm letting you go fifteen minutes early. You should feel proud of yourselves for getting free time like this. Any questions?" Chou raises her hand, prompting an impatient sigh from the sergeant. "Yes, Squishy?"

"Sir, what should I do with these clothes, sir?" Chou asks.

"Keep them," sarge says, "They're standard issue. Anybody else?" A boy with a huge mane of orange hair that Emily doesn't recognize raises his hand. "What is it, Lassie?"

"Sir, how do we get out of here, sir?" the boy dubbed Lassie asks.

"The same way we came in," sarge responds, draping himself on the bench and closing his eyes as though he's going to take a nap, "Dismissed!"


	18. It's Full of Stars

The group of students stand around, discussing with each other about how to get out of the maze. Sarge obviously doesn't care what they do, his eyes closed as he relaxes on the bench. Emily starts to think about how smug he must be, dragging them out to the middle of a maze and leaving them to fend for themselves. Quite mean spirited of him, to be sure. Emily doesn't bother paying attention to the group's chatter, instead thinking of something she can say to Riku. She would lead the group out herself, but she hadn't been paying attention as usual. Emily never really learned how to make proper small talk, so she's at a lost for what to talk about. She can't exactly gush over how Queens of the Stone Age released a new single or something. Live is difficult as a fish out of water with no pop culture to draw from.

After a couple minutes of back and forth discussion, Emily decides to just sneak off on her own. The group lacks a leader or a clue and with no way to further endear herself to Riku at the moment, her primary concern should be to get to class on time. It doesn't prove too hard to break away, her instincts telling her to keep low and to casually edge as close to the nearby bend as she can before silently walking away when nobody is paying attention. A group of 39 shouldn't really care what she is up to and judging by her wallflower status, probably won't even notice.

Away from the group, Emily tries to orient herself. She remembers that the universal maze solution is to follow one wall, but that is a bit too impractical with the time limit imposed and the indeterminate size of the labyrinth. She remembers back to one of her homeroom classes. The teacher spent a day about the history of hedge mazes, but all she can remember about it is that she wrote a story featuring Kiko where she went clothes shopping with Riku and had an intimate moment in the changing room. So much for that. The ideal exit hits her like a load of bricks. All she has to do is just climb over the hedges. Three dimensional thinking at its finest. She is confident she can at least jump from wall to wall, so all she has to do is somehow get up there. Emily starts digging her hands into the nearby wall, finding it too thick to get a good grip. There has to be some type of enchantment because there's no reason she can't even get her hand inside.

Then an idea comes to her. All she has to do is go to one of the narrow parts and jump between two walls. She has no reason to think that she isn't capable of this. Sure, most of her knowledge of what an assassin is capable of comes from playing partway through some of the Metal Gear Solid games, but she's in a video game world and there's no reason to believe that she can't perform the same sort of actions. A couple turns and corners later, she finds a section narrow enough to try her plan. Her instincts take over for her, with her effortlessly kicking from wall to wall and emerging on top of the eight meter tall hedge. Emily stands there, adjusting herself to prevent from sinking in. It doesn't take her too long to find the castle, but she then notices a bunch of robots not too far off in the distance heading towards her.

The robots hover in close to Emily, taking positions at all sides. They are all fixated on her, their intent unclear as melodic clicks emanate from them. What do they want? To Emily's surprise, a bright flash comes forth from an eye of the robot in front of her. As her vision gets mostly blocked by her eyes' reaction, she feels herself starting to be pushed. The rounded and rubberized hands of the robots prod at her, trying to shove her off the side. Emily tries to hold her position, but as her footing on the hedge grows tenuous, she ends up toppling over. Before she falls too far, she feels some robot hands catch her by her back. The hands dig a bit too deep into Emily as the robot gently carries her down, placing her back onto the ground. The robot then hovers back up, the whole group flying off in random directions.

Emily stands there for a minute or two, confused about what just happened. Why did the robots prevent her from getting up? Do they want to make her go through the maze properly? A bit miffed that she only has about seven minutes of free time, she starts running around the circle towards the castle. As she starts approaching a dead end, she hops towards the wall on her right. She kicks off of it, heading forwards and towards the wall to her left. A few more kicks, she is back up on the wall. Not wasting any time, she starts running along the wall towards the castle. As the robots start zooming in, Emily starts taking evasive maneuvers. Shifting from wall to wall and performing a few somersaults underneath the incoming robots, she eventually reaches the end. Worried that the robots are going to drag her all the way towards the center, Emily slides over the side and drops to the ground. She stumbles as she lands, rolling on the ground. The lack of pain surprises her, no doubt due to the eight meter fall as opposed to fifteen. As Emily looks up with the expectation that the robots are going to scoop her up, but they all hover away after staring at her a little.

Emily gets up and starts briskly walking towards the castle. Through the courtyard and the front hall she goes, stopping inside room 201. Everybody else must still be in the maze because the room is just the way they left it. Emily grabs her clipboard and walks back outside, drifting along through the hallways without much of a care. It still irritates her how pretty much the entire fifteen minute passing period has to be used in order to get to her next class. Still, with a couple minute lead on everybody else, she should be able to get some alone time with Professor Kern. A bunch of long hallways, bridges, and an elevator later, she's at the southwest tower, room 414.

The room is relatively small, with a brown paint job all around. Ten desks sealed off with two meter tall office cubicle barriers are in the center, a horizontal computer with monitor and keyboard on top of each. In one corner is a cart with all sorts of assorted equipment and another corner has some type of large metallic globe on a cart. The chairs that should be at the desks are instead arranged near the front in a line, an eleventh chair across from the middle and facing the others. A 4'11" brown haired woman wearing a business casual suit and a pair of thick, large glasses is writing something on her notepad. She turns to face Emily, putting her pencil on the pad as she walks over.

"Hello, Emily," a voice says from an uncertain direction says, Kern's mouth not moving. Emily gets a bit of shock from hearing that name.

"My name is Kiko," Emily says, her voice just a bit doubtful and uncertain. Is Kern reading her mind or did the administration figure out her real name?

"Kiko?" the voice says, "But you're imprinted as Emily Tennenbaum."

"Are you reading my mind?" Emily asks, a feeling of paranoia going over her.

"No, not strictly speaking," the voice says, "Everybody's imprinted name hovers around them at all times, as you probably know."

"Any way to stop this?" Emily asks, "And could you talk normally? I'm getting a headache." Kern stares at Emily for a few seconds before starting to talk normally.

"You're taking this class, but you're uninitiated?" Kern asks, her voice fairly atonal and wavering, "Dear me oh my. The management told me that you'd be unexperienced, but this is unexpected."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Emily says, feeling like she walked into the wrong room.

"You're able to at least receive telepathic messages, though," the indeterminate voice resumes, "We don't have enough time to talk right now, but I'll talk with you in a few minutes. Feel free to take a seat."

"Okay," Emily says, walking to the far end of the line and taking a seat. She places the clipboard down, trying to ease into the seat. She's pretty glad to be back in her natural educational state. The only thing missing is a notebook for her to write down her story ideas, but since this isn't a boring class like American History or Beginning Geometry, she doesn't care that much about not having a boredom deterrent. Less than a minute later, everybody else files into the room. Emily is a bit disconcerted by the lack of speech, everybody just looking at each other with the occasional nod. Ahmed walks in last, not looking so happy. He and Kern look at each other for a little before he sits down. The professor takes the eleventh seat facing them, sitting with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands.

"Welcome to Beginning Psionics," the indeterminate voice calls out, "I'm glad that we were able to gather the ten people necessary for the school to keep this course going. Despite how the management is treating this class, it is the most important aspect of this organization. Psionics cannot be remotely disrupted by any machine, cannot be intercepted, and will not mislead you without signs of tampering. Everybody here has their particular focus and style I may or may not be able to offer input on, so my role is to assist in teaching the unifying telepathic abilities and defense against psionic disruptance."

"I have a few ground rules for conduct. First, nobody here is allowed to speak verbally. Everything from the moment you enter this room to the moment you leave will be telepathic. While I've already confirmed nine of you, I will have to spend a few minutes to get our tenth ready. After that, there will be no noise at all. Second, I want everybody here to trust each other. If you have any issues with each other, you're going to have to work them out. We are the only eleven people in this building that can communicate with each other telepathically and when we graduate, we're most likely going to have to work with each other. Finally, if you have any psychological problems, no matter how minor, please get some counseling for them. Any psychosis can be used against you. If you need help in diagnosing them, I can help with probes."

"My format for this class is quite simple. Everybody is assigned a booth, which contains a psionic interface. Each of them has a set of programs designed for your focus. From time to time, I will have a group assignment. Due to the nature of the material, the schedule will include a ten minute wrapping up period at the end so as to not end in the middle of a problem. During those ten minutes, just finish your latest problem and you're free to go. Are there any questions?"

Emily just sits there in total silence for a minute. A migraine headache that was in the first stages of manifestation earlier has come to full prominence now. It feels like somebody took a sledgehammer to the back of her eyes. She really wants some medication, but she has no way to communicate this without breaking the class rules. Emily barely notices the other students stand up, pick up their chairs, and walk over to a booth. Kern walks over to the large metallic sphere, pressing on some glowing lights on a patch of its surface.

"Come here, please, Emily," the voice calls out. It takes a few seconds before it sinks in, with Emily reluctantly walking over. The sphere now has a layer of glowing green light surrounding it, with flashes of various other colors occasionally sparkling forth. Emily gives Kern a confused expression about what she should do.

"Just look into the sphere," the voice says, "Do you need help?" Emily nods. "Please get your chair and sit on it facing the sphere."

Emily walks back, grabs her chair, and goes back to the sphere. After Emily finishes sitting down, Kern grabs onto the sides of her head and forces her to watch the sphere. As Emily watches, she starts to feel more and more detached from herself. The migraine headache starts going into overdrive, the pain becoming incredible. Emily's vision keeps zooming backwards, a whiteness starting to envelop everything. Some animal instinct starts to overcome her, trying to look away from the sphere. It's a futile gesture, however, with her body gradually growing more and more limp. The green layer on the sphere starts to melt away, revealing what appears to be a sea of stars with a nebula in the foreground. It starts zooming around, traveling through what appears to be space as Emily's vision gets gradually more limited. Eventually, the whiteness overcomes her and her consciousness gives out, fading away as the last bit of color drains from her vision.


	19. Space Does Not Work That Way

In the depths of space, there usually shouldn't be a whole lot of anything. In order for planets to form, they have to be a good distance away from each other to prevent them from smashing each other into small pieces. And not just a five minute distance, but several thousand times the size of each planet. The Apollo rockets took a couple days in order to reach the moon and by the time they got there, Earth appeared to be just a small little marble in the sky. It certainly wasn't a casual foray that had the astronauts out after lunch and back by dinner. To a person that spent their life thinking their home town is big, they have no clue the sense of scale that space offers.

Or so our dear starship captain thought. After some type of negative space wedgy flung his ship randomly across the multiverse as he and his crew slept, they ended up here. For somebody that is used to moons being a minimum of an hour's travel at maximum speed and asteroid fields where it takes a lot of effort to actually get hit, coming out to a thicket of flying rocks is a shock. The starship Cenari, the latest in 25th century human technology with six decks capable of supporting 52 people and a max speed of 0.895 percent the speed of light, proves no match for the debris. In spite of luckily coming out at the edge, debris the size of baseballs puncture through the pressurized hull. It was only by the mercy of some plot deity that the compartment with the captain and a few other people went unharmed. With the electrical system down and the atmosphere slowly draining from the capsule, the trained professionals spring to action.

"What happened?" the captain asks, unstrapping himself out of his bed. He tries to push himself away, a bit of surprise coming to him from the gravity. It weirds him out because there is no way the starship could have crash landed on a planet and be in this sort of condition. The whole thing would just fall apart due to the lack of structural support, the rivets and beams not graded for usage within any significant level of gravity pulling from any direction but towards the engines. With no clue what is going on but the feeling the air getting more shallow by the minute, he starts walking towards the closet as the other three men begin to get up.

"It felt like something hit us," a brown haired crew member comments as he starts unstrapping himself, "How are you standing like that, captain?"

"I have no idea, lieutenant," the captain responds, opening the closet and taking out a white suit, "My first thought was that we landed on a planet, but the ship should have collapsed from its weight by now. We'll see what's going on in a minute."

The four men don their suits with backpacks and tinted helmets, pressing buttons that make them puff out and pressurize. After a short test of the radio system, they perform a manual bypass on the door. The hallway has random sections with small blazes and a lot of sparks flying around.

"What the... how is there fire with no oxygen?" a crew member asks, a crackle of distortion working its way into his broadcast, "External pressure is at zero."

"Something is wrong," the captain starts, "I'm going to the bridge. Everybody, please check on the other compartments." The captain walks in the opposite direction of the other three, carefully maneuvering through the hallways. The ship wasn't built with any center of gravity in mind, rendering some passages too narrow to stand upright within and the path to the bridge an upright crawl with almost nothing to hold onto. It takes all of the captain's skill to climb the ten meters of tubes, emerging into the domed cockpit with its 360 degree view of the outside.

The captain starts to feel like he's hallucinating when he sees the area surrounding him. Behind the ship is a condensed asteroid field, with barely any distance between each rock. A quarter of the view in front of the ship is consumed by a nearby green planet, two grey moons barely even out of its atmosphere. Confusingly, with no star in sight, the entire planet is illuminated as far as the eye can see. The captain notices a nearby comet, flying towards the ship. In spite of the highly unlikely possibility of anything unintentionally hitting the ship, he can't help but estimate the comet to hit the ship within approximately six minutes.

"What's our status?" a crew member asks over the radio.

"Something bizarre is going on," the captain starts, "We're definitely still in space, but there's almost no distance between anything. And while the odds of it should be infinitesimal, there seems to be a comet about to hit us."

"...what?" the man on the other end asks.

"I don't have any clue what's going on," the captain starts, "But we're definitely in danger. If not from this comet, then from crashing into the planet or one of its moons. What's the status report?"

"All the other compartments have been breached," one of the other men starts, "It's a sickening display. Everybody just... exploded."

"You mean they died from uncontrolled decompression causing anoxia?" the captain asks.

"No..." the crew member says, "They just... literally exploded from the inside out. Blood everywhere. It's profoundly disturbing."

"I'll take your word for it," the captain says, "It's a shame to lose so many crew members in a senseless accident, but we must carry on. What's the status on the generators?"

"Not good," another man states, "All the wiring is shot. The heatsinks are gradually failing to contain the fuel cells."

"How is the landing craft?" the captain asks.

"It seems unharmed," the crew member starts, "The electrical system is working, the engines are reporting full functionality, and there are no hull breaches. Suggested course of action is to abandon ship."

"...no," the captain vetoes, starting back down the path he took.

"Excuse me, sir?" one of the men asks, a tone of disbelief in his voice, "Protocol states-"

"I know what it says," the captain starts, "Everybody else, take the landing craft. I'm the only one remotely qualified to handle the engines at this point. I'll try to manually operate them."

"But sir, the radiation-" one of the men starts.

"If we lose this ship, we're just going to die after a couple weeks," the captain says, starting his crawl through a narrow corridor, "Just take the landing craft and go. I'm more than willing to risk my life."

"...yes, sir," everybody else says.

Meanwhile, on the outside, the comet continues its headlong course towards the ship. Without any doubt, a collision is inevitable. With only a short period of time left, the landing craft breaks away from the ship and starts flying away in a random direction. A couple seconds too late, the main ship's engines activate. The comet slams into the ship before it barely even moves. The impact generates a huge explosion, a shockwave coming forth. As it consumes and destroys the landing craft, a white flash emanates forth and blanks out everything in sight.

--

Emily's sight starts to return, everything blurry. A numb feeling still pervades her body, unable to move anything but her eyes. She starts to wonder about what she just saw, confident that it is definitely a dream. It lacked logic, consistency, or perspective. Details were random, sketchy, and minimalistic. Like most of her dreams in the past, the people that aren't her or Riku are boring. She already knew who the captain was just through some type of unknown source of information. There's no doubt that it's a dream. She's glad that she's stopped having dreams about her dead friends, although the move to boring science fiction doesn't suit her well. As much as it breaks her heart to be reminded of what she invariably left behind, she's in a better place now and there's no point mourning over what is gone.

As her eyes focus, she finds herself in the cafeteria. She's sitting at an unfamiliar table, with a plate of food in front of her. There are also a couple machines of some type, the only one of which looks even the slightest bit familiar appears to be a video camera. Across from her is Professor Kern, a look of disinterest on her face as she watches Emily. She has this spacey look in her eyes, as though she's looking through Emily as opposed to at her. It's starting to get a little creepy.

"Are you back now?" rings out a voice in Emily's head. She tries to move, only just barely twitching her head. Emily starts to get that horrible pins and needles feeling throughout her body. It doesn't take too long before she regains motor control and a sense of feeling. A wave of humiliation goes over her when she realizes that she has been drooling for some indeterminate period of time, a portion of her shirt soaked in saliva. She tries to clean herself up, a wave of pain shooting through her body everywhere she moves. She grabs a nearby napkin and wipes herself clean. She'll definitely have to get a new shirt.

"I have good news and bad news," the voice starts, "The good news is that your brain survived the initiation. Usually, being out this long means that you cortex got disconnected, but you're back. The bad news is that you're probably a passive vessel, which is pretty much useless to us."

"I'm sorry," Emily says, holding a couple fingers to her temples as another headache starts to develop.

"However," the voice says as Kern starts activating some of the machines, "even as a passive vessel, you should have still had a vision. Please describe it in full."

"I had a weird dream," Emily starts, "In it, these astronauts ended up coming out of some asteroid field. Their ship got damaged, killing all but four of them and they were on a crash course with a comet. After some arguing, three of them left on some other ship, the last one staying behind to try and save the ship somehow. It crashed, causing a huge explosion that destroyed the other ship."

"...that's it?" the voice says, "Can you give any names? Details? What did the area look like?"

"I... don't know," Emily says, "I think there was a blue planet and two or three moons nearby. It's fading like all my dreams. I remember the feelings I had, but they weren't anything big."

"And here I was, expecting some major vision like all the real precogs get," the voice continues, "Weak. I can't really do anything for you, but the bureaucrats running this school won't let me continue this class if I don't have ten people. They claim that it's too niche and that magic can do everything we can while being a lot more accessible. Philistines, the whole lot of them."

"Why are you telling me this, anyway?" Emily asks, figuring out that there is a point to it. She starts eating some of the stuff that is sitting in front of her, figuring that's why it was brought there. Important to keep the energy flowing and stuff.

"I want you to stay in my class," the voice continues, "I only teach that one class, so if it gets canceled, so does my contract. Outside of King Mickey, the management doesn't care for me and would be happy to find an excuse to get me removed. I can't exactly go back home, either, so I must stay at this school. I can set it up so you can just do whatever you want in a simulation room. I'll reserve the bottom room for you during the class periods."

"Um... thanks, I guess," Emily says.

"You can use the time however you see fit," the voice explains, "Do the 1000 Floor Dungeon, catch up on your assigned weight training... use one of the blue programs, whatever."

"Blue programs?" Emily asks. She can't quite tell what it means due to the lack of complex inflection of telepathy.

"You're telling me you didn't read your manual?" the voice asks, with no undertone of any emotion but a definite sense of it.

"I read some of it," Emily starts, "Mostly the history."

"Read the chapter on the simulation chambers during your passing period," the voice states as Kern slides Emily's clipboard over to her, "Anyway, I'll write up some directions for Wednesday and slide it under your door. Don't talk with anybody about this. You're free to go."

"Okay," Emily says, looking around as she gets up from the table. She wants to talk with Riku and hopefully Sora and Kairi as well, but it seems that it's 12:10 and next to nobody is still in the room. Bummer. Emily decides to walk back to her room, with only 35 minutes before her appointment to get changed and read the chapter.


	20. The Seattle Sound

Emily walks through the hallways over to her room, her mind pre-occupied with Kern's deal. She's already feeling doubtful about having to be part of some sort of conspiracy, but she knows that Kern could reveal her identity. She doesn't even know why she's so particular about hiding it, but something about the name Emily just seems so mundane and unspectacular. Riku is better than some normal person like Emily, so she needs to be Kiko, the extraordinary girlfriend capable of being everything that Riku wants and a whole lot more. Besides, it's not like Emily has to do anything distasteful. She just has to go play simulation video games and not tell anybody about it. Life is good.

Emily walks into her room, heading over to her closet. After picking out another dark blue shirt and changing into it, she plops onto the couch and picks up the black binder. It only takes a few minutes to find the chapter in question.

**Simulation Room**

The Simulation Rooms are the latest in space distortion and spectral composition. They also contain variable physics engines and neural interlinks. What this means is that in each of these 60x40 meter rooms, anything and everything that can be imagined can be done. There are rules for safe, constructive use of the system, however. While there are safety precautions built into the core programming, the system's fluid nature means that accidents can and do happen. You must observe the following rules at all times:

1) No tampering shall be performed on the controls, programming, or equipment. The only piece of equipment that shall be directly used is the neural link and the primary control pad. Any and all tampering will result in immediate academic discipline, with potential expulsion and criminal charges.

2) All programs must be authorized before usage in the system. All programs available in the main storage area have already been authorized, but if one wants to get a purchased program approved, they may leave it in the specially marked bin. It will be reviewed and deconstructed by the panel to insure that it meets safety guidelines, then merged into the primary collection. For security reasons, none of the programs may be privately owned, but all program submissions are anonymous to begin with.

3) If anybody offers to run a program that does not come from the main archives, refuse and report the person as having an illegally obtained program disc. Action will not be immediately taken upon them, instead alerting the system towards their usage of the rooms in order to catch them in the act. Please do not refrain from reporting people due to any belief that they will harass you over it.

4) All programs have their own interfaces for starting, pausing, and ending a simulation. However, some safeguards were put into the system in case programming bugs disable the proper interface. The overriding safe phrase to cancel a simulation at any time in any condition is "Alpha Entropy Twenty". Memorize it before using the system. Only use the phrase in the case of either the program glitching in a way to make it inescapable or unexpected personal injury. Usage of the phrase will alert the medical drones and send them to your location.

5) Report any and all program glitches, however minor, to the office with as much detail about the events leading up to the glitch as possible.

The Simulation Room works by the reservation of blocks of time. For red and purple training programs, a maximum of 30 minutes per weekday and 120 minutes per weekend day may be scheduled, with a maximum of 300 minutes per week. Class periods do not count towards this total. Blue Programs are on their own schedule and may be scheduled for a maximum of 30 minutes per day towards a maximum of 75 minutes per week. Blue Programs are considered a luxury and if it is believed that they are interfering with class work, privileges will be suspended until such a time when the administration believes that you are capable of using them responsibly.

**How the Simulation Room Works**

The Simulation Room has four primary components. The primary component in using the Simulation Room is a Neural Tiara. The Neural Tiara works by smoothing out the real world inconsistencies and allowing for risk-free injuries. It is also used for most of the finer details. The room itself consists of a rubberized 60x40 meter room divided into grids. It's near impossible to get injured for real inside this room due to the mattress system. The third component is the anti-gravity control. This is usually brought to play when excessive vertical travel is involved. Finally, the hologram system creates artificial objects within the room. These are usually fairly simple looking, with Goraud shading and only as many polygons as needed to convey the needed shape. The Neural Tiara fills in the texture and finer details.

**Program Categories**

Program Categories are divided into four types.

Unlisted Programs are instructor specific programs that can only be used with their express permission. They are not listed and require a special code card given out by them. It is very rare for any such program to be used outside of a classroom setting and as such, will be monitored in real time.

Red Programs are generalized training programs. These range from beginning to advanced skill levels and require a progression through the sequential ranks. They are not monitored except when they are assigned by an instructor. See the list for more details on what skills have programs available.

Blue Programs are for entertainment purposes only. As mentioned in the general rules, real world sexual relations are forbidden. Because the management recognizes that all of the students have urges, a large percentage of the blue programs are dedicated to satisfying said urges. However, there are other types of blue programs dedicated to various other activities. The unifying theme to the blue programs is that they do not offer any refinement of skills that can be applied towards combat use. See the list for all the currently offered blue programs.

Purple Programs are essentially games that have a strong tie to a combat application. Unlike some of the blue programs, all the purple programs use your regular physical body. These are the programs that we encourage the casual use of. See the list for all currently offered purple programs.

Emily starts to think about what she just read. She always hated how her old school treated sex as some major taboo and even talking about it resulted in discipline. However, even with the lax attitude towards sex that this school has, it almost seems worse. She can't imagine that sex with holograms is anything but empty and having programs that just skip past all the romance and development of relationships and such in favor of pointless sex just seems wrong. She also has a goal now. In the real world, she had pretty much accepted that nobody would ever be as special and worthwhile as Riku, so she didn't care if she lost her virginity to some jerk jock. However, with Riku now a real person, she isn't so callous. She doesn't want to lose her virginity to some hologram. She wants Riku to see her for everything special that she is and when both of them are ready, they can have real sex without holograms. The rules can go to hell for all she cares.

Emily tosses the book aside, grabs her clipboard, and walks outside. Some more dreamy drifting through the hallways later, she enters the Central Atrium. To her surprise, Sora is walking out of room 802, clipboard in hand. He's wearing a blue shirt and some loose blue jeans. A far cry from his normal appearance, but then again, who wants to wear the same clothes every single day?

"Hi, Kiko!" he says, enthusiastically.

"Hello, Sora," Emily responds, "How is... stuff?"

"Pretty good," Sora says, "Do you have Professor Uina as your adviser as well?"

"I don't know," Emily starts, "My schedule just says room 802."

"Yeah, it's Professor Uina," Sora starts, "Funny how this worked out, isn't it?"

"It is a bit of a coincidence," Emily says, not really caring, "Where is Professor Uina, anyway? The clock over there says it's 12:43."

"He had to make a phone call," Sora responds.

"Oh," Emily says.

"He's sort of weird. Come, let's sit down," Sora offers, walking over to a nearby bench. Emily follows, figuring that this could be prime information gathering time. She sits on the opposite end of the bench away from Sora.

"So, um... what did you want to talk about?" Emily asks. Something about Sora is creeping her out.

"I just wanted to chat with you," Sora starts, "Riku finds you sort of weird, but I want to know more about you."

"There isn't anything to know," Emily starts, "I'm just some girl that lost her world to the Heartless and ended up here. However, I'm interested in the real story behind you. You saved the universe, after all."

"Oh, everything is so overstated about me," Sora starts, "It's sort of a pain being famous. I just want to talk with other people about them, you know. It's always just... Sora, Sora, Sora! How did you get the keyblade? Did you really get turned into a Heartless? Are you and Kairi an item? I'm so tired of it all. I already answer every common question in the book."

"I haven't read that deep," Emily starts, trying to think of a way to casually get him to answer the last of the questions, "What do you usually say if somebody asks one of those common questions?"

"I just answer them truthfully," Sora says, "It really bugs me when people ask me that last question, though. It's just... how much more obvious can you be?"

"I hear that," Emily says, feeling defeated, "So, um... what did you want to talk about?"

"I have some inside information," Sora starts, perking back up, "This weekend, we're going to do some field work. I guess a decent sized group of Heartless have mobilized and we're going to try to stop them before they do anything bad."

"Sounds fun," Emily says, "What were you thinking of for me?"

"We're splitting into pairs to search for clues," Sora starts, "The Heartless were sighted on some backwater planet the other day. Everybody thinks it was just a testing ground, but we can never be too sure."

"Well..." Emily starts, thinking hard. If she could figure out a way to get Riku as her partner, it would be a huge step forward.

"Riku already has plans," Sora states, "So does Kairi. I don't really know anybody else at this school, so I was hoping you could be my partner."

Emily sits there, thinking about what Sora is offering. If he's to be believed, Riku isn't going to be available for her. It sort of miffs her that a perfect chance to finally get some alone time with him is dashed before she ever even heard of this event. However, she does want to integrate with the group and Sora always seemed to be their unofficial leader. She only hopes it wasn't through virtue of being the main character in the video game series.

"Miss Kiko?" a man says from the now open door to 802.

"I accept," Emily blurts out, getting up, "I'll see you at dinner."

"See you later!" Sora says, smiling. Emily gives him sort of a weak smile before turning around to head into the room. The room is predictably small, a stark contrast to the lower floors. There is barely enough room for a desk with computer and two office chairs. The office is decorated with all sorts of posters for things Emily doesn't recognize. She feels right at place when she notices a poster of a cat hanging from a branch with the slogan 'hang in there', though. The most conspicuous object in the room, however, is a two meter tall, full body mirror directly opposite of the door. That has to be the entry point to the uncharted section. Sitting behind the desk is a middle aged man in a red and navy plaid sweater vest and a pair of glasses that accent his medium length brown hair. How unmilitaristic.

"Hello, Miss Kiko," the man named Uina starts, "How are you doing today?"

"Good, I guess," Emily starts, "I'm still getting used to all this new stuff."

"Yeah, I read your file," Uina continues, "So, um... anyway, what brings you to this misfit universe?"

"...huh?" Emily asks, surprised.

"Let's just break kayfabe," Uina starts, pressing a few buttons on his keyboard and causing it to shut down, "As Leon's testimony on your file notes, you ended up in this universe after the Heartless consumed your old world... or something. Nothing too special. But where things get interesting is your claim that you you received a new body from the experience."

"Um, yeah..." Emily starts, trying to think of a way out, "I think my memories were-"

"Please," Uina interrupts, "Blue hair isn't exactly a naturally occurring phenomenon and I can tell by the way that you carry yourself that this isn't the body you grew up in. You're sort of slouching towards the front ever so slightly, as though you aren't used to your own weight or proportions."

"Okay, yeah, I did come from an alternate universe," Emily says, "I'm just sick of explaining it now."

"Looking over your form," Uina continues, "You talk about advanced infiltration and stealth assassination skills with complete uncertainty. It takes years to actually form those skills. So my best theory is that you crossed over through the celestial system. Now that I think about it..."

"...what?" Emily asks as Uina stares at her. He randomly pulls out a pointing stick and bats her hair around. Emily backs off, feeling really uncomfortable.

"You got Metadronis, didn't you?" Uina asks as he casually tosses the stick behind him, "And I thought she was just bluffing."

"Huh?" Emily says, confused.

"You're probably wondering why I care so much," Uina starts, "Like you, I got sent here due to some contrived reasons. You see, in the world I came from, I was an ex-military strategic officer that took a position of guidance counselor at my hometown's school. I just wanted to distance myself as far away from the Iran-Contra affair as I could. But it was not to be. One day, while I was pulling an all-nighter to update my system to Windows 98, some mysterious figure attacked me, but backed off after a single blow. I came back to find the school being enveloped by darkness and my computer offering an escape. Pressing okay just caused me to get sucked up into a wormhole."

"That sounds like what happened to me," Emily responds.

"Not quite," Uina continues, "You claim to have been sent here by the Heartless destroying your world, but that can't possibly be the case. The real Heartless would have consumed your 'heart' and left behind a soulless body. A philosophical zombie, if you will. Just like the Nobodies. No, the real Heartless weren't involved in your transit here."

"But that's what happened," Emily explains, "I got sucked into a black hole that the Heartless created just like you."

"The Heartless don't exist outside of this universe or the Realm of Darkness," Uina starts, "Only the physical laws of this particular universe can support them. Otherwise, they'd dissolve into blobs of lifeless mercury with a quickly shorted electrical charge immediately upon their arrival. I certainly didn't see any Heartless in my trip through the wormhole. But that's something we'll figure out once you write a ten page paper on your journey here. Any questions before we move on to the next part?"

"Um, yeah..." Emily starts, "Who is 'Metadronis'?"

"I'm glad you asked," Uina continues, "Metadronis is a Seraph. She's in charge of all immigrants from Mundane Eurasian Earth, as she called it. She offered me three paths, but I negotiated with her for a custom selection. I took the Mage path, but I asked for my skill to come through in the form of inventions. I dumped the 'stunning handsomeness' and the useless mage accessories in favor of getting my office back. I didn't want my identity to get diluted."

"This is all so very fascinating," Emily starts, "But what does this have to do with anything?"

"I want to leave this universe," Uina continues, "This place is terrible. Nothing makes sense at all. All the castaway people, planets, and random forces of nature get thrown to this universe at random. Nothing whatsoever is ever consistent and most of the people here have a tint of psychopathy to them. I want to go back to my old world and if my theory is correct, you're just what I need."

"But I don't want to leave," Emily starts, "Everything here is just so much better than the old world. Back there, I was a total dork that couldn't stand up for myself. Now, I have all these fighting and athletic skills. In the old world, my body was horrible. It never gained any weight and I was always tired all the time. I was so weak, I couldn't even do a single pull-up. Now, I'm actually able to do this sort of stuff. This school is so much better than my old one. And best of all, I finally have someonnnnn..." Emily breaks off her sentence, realizing that it's not quite a good topic to just blurt out.

"Less than a week and you're already chasing somebody," Uina says, dryly, "Whatever. Once you start seeing the chaos all around us, you'll want to go back to the real world, too. I've been here over thirty years, unaging, and I want to go back."

"But you said Windows 98," Emily says, "That was only ten years ago at most. I was barely even old enough to remember it."

"Time doesn't have a cross-universal standard," Uina continues, "I've met people that came from the Roman Empire, Elizabethan England, and the far future Terran Imperial Directorate. Anyone can be snatched out of any time period and dropped in any time period here."

"Again, I ask," Emily says, losing patience, "What does any of this have to do with me?"

"Before I can think of any plan," Uina continues, pulling out a zippered binder from his desk, "I need to find out if you're from the same universe as me. Look through this CD collection I confiscated off of a student and tell me if it seems familiar."

"Okay," Emily says, taking the binder. She unzips it and starts reading some of the labels. _Dirt_ by Alice in Chains, _Ten_ by Pearl Jam, _Core_ by Stone Temple Pilots, _Superunknown_ by Soundgarden, _Nevermind_ by Nirvana... while she doesn't recognize any of the other bands or albums, Nirvana sounds familiar to her.

"Isn't Nirvana that band where the singer killed himself?" Emily asks, "Kurt Cobain, I think?"

"Not a graceful way of saying that, but yes," Uina says, "God, I'm so glad you're from the same universe and not too far from the same time period. You even have Celestial Tint should I choose to take a purely magical path. Now, I can finally continue my research."

"I don't want to have any part in this," Emily responds.

"You don't have to actually come with me," Uina offers, "I just want to try and get back to my old universe. What you want to do is up to you."

"In that case... I guess I'll help," Emily says, getting creepy vibes from this guy.

"Thank you," Uina says, "I'm glad I set up this appointment as soon as I could. I've been working to recruit other people to the cause, but it's hard. Sora would have been a big asset, but he refused. Probably for the better."

"What do you mean by that?" Emily asks.

"Sora is sort of... I don't know," Uina starts, "He holds grudges and has some weird thoughts about morality. He acts like he's above killing anything with sentience or sapience, but he was more than happy to kill the Nobodies without any remorse. Something about this just bothers me to no end."

"I never really thought of it that way..." Emily starts, looking for a topic change, "May I keep these CDs? If you're not using them, that is."

"Sure," Uina says, pulling out a portable CD player and headphones as well, "I'm not into metal or grunge or whatever this stuff is. You'll need this CD player and headphones as well, though."

"Thank you," Emily says, scooping the stuff up.

"Oh," Uina says, searching around his desk for a little before picking up a laminated piece of paper, "This is your workout schedule. Anyway, I'll slide a file with directions under your door sometime during dinner. Don't talk with anybody about our meeting. Thank you for coming and I'll see you later."

"See you later," Emily says, picking up the laminated piece of paper and walking out the door with everything in hand.


	21. Bunny Hopping

Emily drifts through the next couple hours without really paying much attention. Her class on Combat Acrobatics proves to be a bit frustrating with the teacher and every single other student being a magically enhanced person way above her skill level. Even with the lax rules of physics that the universe provides, Emily still can't quite rooftop jump across two lane roads or climb sheer face surfaces. It doesn't help that the professor has a bit of a mean streak and treats Emily as inherently inferior for her lack of magically enhanced ability. Two and a quarter hours of hell, to be sure. Emily could have sworn that she'd have the gravel of the asphalt imprinted on her face, but she remembers that as realistic as it is, it's just a simulation.

After a quick cat nap on her couch, Emily finally works up the energy to go to dinner. Another uneventful passing through corridors takes her to the dining room, with a bored circle of the entrees completing her tray of stuff she can only half-identify. She never did think too hard about what type of food is actually available in the Kingdom Hearts universe. It was always sort of assumed to be like reality unless noted and the ice cream bars are definitely analogous to reality. At least everything tastes fine for the most part. It takes a minute before she finds Sora, Riku, and Kairi, walking over and sitting down by them.

"Hi, Kiko!" Sora says, smiling.

"Hello, Sora," Emily says, lethargically. As much as she'd like to talk with Sora about stuff, she's just too tired from so many failures. She slumps her head down by the table, expending as little energy as possible to eat her meal. From Emily's limited field of view, Kairi seems just as tired but not quite at Emily's phase. More sort of a slouching back into the chair pose than putting her face on the table.

"How was class, Kiko?" Riku asks. Emily perks up a little at her idol finally talking to her without a prompt.

"Oh, it was... I don't know, really hard," Emily says, giving her best smile. Progress!

"She was in Combat Acrobatics with me," Sora starts, enthusiasm high in his voice, "She's great."

"No, I'm not," Emily starts, "I just fell to my virtual death twenty times at anything with a wider gap than an alley. I'm not even in the same league as everybody else in that class."

"You shouldn't be so hard on yourself," Sora starts, "For somebody completely natural, you did awesome."

"Some use I'll be," Emily says, cynicism oozing, "It's like being a prime contender at the Special Olympics. Even though I'm great in my division, I'm still handicapped and useless at anything that matters."

"Special Olympics?" Riku asks. Everybody else also looks curious.

"It's a competition for retarded people..." Emily says, realizing that she really needs to cut back on the references to her old world, "Nevermind. Sorry, forgot it's different here."

"You shouldn't be so hard on yourself," Sora consoles, "For you to even be here means that you're a cut above the rest. That you're taking an action role without any powers just means that you'll be unstoppable with them."

"Except I don't have them," Emily starts, "Sort of kills that argument. Unless they're going to give me a magic necklace or inject me with chemicals or something. Seems unlikely. Anyway, how was your day, Kairi?"

"It was really hard," Kairi starts, "I don't think I can do this."

"Oh, nonsense," Emily says, doing her best to be reassuring in spite of Kairi pretty much just echoing her, "You're a Princess of Heart, whatever that means. That has to count for something."

"But I'm still useless," Kairi starts.

"Please don't say that," Emily starts, "You're special. You just need to find your calling and... stuff."

"Thank you," Kairi says. Emily goes back to eating her food, too drained to think of anything else to talk about.

"What else did King Mickey talk with you about?" Sora asks towards Riku.

"Well, I already told you about the weekend event," Riku starts, "He also wanted to make sure that morale is high. I've been trying to make sure everybody has friends, but there are still a few loners that refuse to talk to me."

"Loners are scary," Sora starts, "Who would want to stay away from other people? Anybody that would avoid others must hate them."

Emily finds this offensive. Lots of people just simply have problems with relating to other people. It becomes a self-feeding loop of isolation and denial when people start taking the viewpoint that there is something inherently wrong with the person. She knows from experience, since she was always the 'tall creepy girl' when growing up. To hear somebody that she respects say stuff like this feels like an arrow in the chest. She really wants to say something.

"Yeah..." Emily says, half-heartedly. She can't argue with Sora. He outranks her in importance and arguing over something like this isn't going to endear herself to the group. At least Emily isn't a loner any more. She could care less about anybody else suffering as a result of this flawed viewpoint.

"What was happening with you at lunch?" Sora starts, sounding careful, "That really creepy professor had a robot carry you here, then you just sat there with a blank expression. I'm sorry if this is not a topic you want to talk about."

"Oh, it's fine," Emily starts, thinking fast on a way out of the truth, "Anyway, it was some crap involving an initiation. I don't know what any of it was supposed to be, but it broke my mind for a couple hours. After I woke up, she just scolded me for being weak and sent me away. I have no clue what any of it was supposed to be."

"That's so unprofessional," Sora starts, "I hope she gets fired sometime soon. She and her psionics program are worthless."

"You really shouldn't say that, Sora," Riku starts, "We're trying to approach all angles of possible combat application as possible. Psionics might be rare, but it's a valid option."

Emily just tunes out as Sora and Riku have a small argument. She still can't quite figure out the status on Sora and Kairi. He seems to be aware that people hold the opinion that they must be together, but there's just something missing. Emily never really thought too hard about it before, but she now realizes that Sora and Kairi don't treat each other any differently than Riku and Kairi... or Sora and Riku, for that matter. It irritates Emily how inaccessible their little microcosm is. All she wants is to get in so that she can convince Riku how special she is.

"By the way, how are your friends, Kiko?" Riku asks.

"Huh?" Emily says, looking confused, "You guys are my best friends."

"I mean your other friends," Riku starts, "You know, Greg and Ahmed and them."

"They're nice people," Emily says, being as concise as possible.

"You don't like them?" Riku asks, looking at Emily with a bit of concern.

"I do," Emily responds, hoping for an exit out of this conversation. Riku looks at her for a while longer, a sense of expectation in his eyes to a response Emily isn't quite giving.

"...but?" Riku asks.

"They're boring," Emily starts, deciding to just be direct lest Riku pry more, "Except Chou, but she makes me feel uncomfortable."

"Why does she make you feel uncomfortable?" Riku asks.

"...I don't know," Emily starts, "I feel like she took advantage of me."

"It is normal in her culture," Riku responds, "As she mentioned, the Feylinus are wary of outsiders and for any of them to induct you is a rare blessing."

"That's just the thing," Emily starts, "I don't know anything about her culture. She had no idea that I'd find her... falnesmir or whatever to be offensive. She doesn't really know that much about humans, I don't think. Not only that, but she also doesn't seem that smart or perceptive, either. It makes me feel like she's going to do something else to make me feel bad. Not only that, but she's a total crybaby. I feel like I'm trying to avoid stepping on leaves in a forest when I'm around her."

"She's adjusting," Riku states, "Cut her some slack."

"I can't help myself," Emily responds.

"I just want to try to get everybody together," Riku starts, sounding concerned, "Feylinus are notoriously hard when it comes to gaining trust. You did something that got through to Chou and she trusts you. She wouldn't stop talking about you when I saw her at lunch. That means a lot to us that we were able to find somebody to be friends with her."

"Why me?" Emily asks, "I'm no good with people. Not with people that sensitive."

"Because you stood up for her," Riku starts, "That has to count for something."

"I just did it because that jerk sergeant was getting on my nerves," Emily says, disinterested, "Chou is a nice person, but I just don't like being around her. There's nothing wrong with that, is there?"

"Not really, no," Riku says, a small tinge of disappointment in his voice, "Thank you for telling me the truth. I guess I was wrong to think there was something artificial about your behavior. Anyway, please tell me why Greg, Danielle, Ahmed, and Christopher are 'boring'?"

"Because they are," Emily starts, "I can't relate to them. Greg is obsessed with this dumb game and uses magic to take it to a level I could never approach. He and Danielle sort of creep me out with their closeness. They look like brother and sister, but they hug a bit too close and talk like puppy dogs to each other."

"I don't get that sort of sense from them at all," Riku interrupts, "I think you're reading too much into their relationship."

"Now that I think of it, Ahmed sort of scares me," Emily continues, "He can tell what I'm feeling and he looks sort of like an Arab. What if he takes offense at my feelings? He's obsessed with swords and stabbing things to the point where he doesn't even care about his only class that doesn't involve swordfighting."

"Kiko," Riku interrupts, "Everybody here except you went through a psychological screening process. The only people that didn't pass with flying colors were 'the White Stars', but Mickey wanted them specifically for some reason. Regardless, everybody here knows that in-fighting is strictly forbidden and the non-aggression rule pretty much guarantees that no smart person would ever attack anybody else."

"Non-aggression rule?" Emily asks. She's already imagining Riku talking about the book she still hasn't read all the way through.

"It's on page three of the black binder," Riku starts, fulfilling her prediction but not quite as cynically as she expected, "If any student within this school attacks you outside of a controlled environment without your permission, you are to shout for help and go entirely on the defensive. Any and all students present must work together to subdue anybody attacking out of aggression. Once the situation is averted, the administrative office is to be contacted and everybody that was present must go to the hearing."

"Oh," Emily responds.

"You have nothing to worry about," Riku assures, "So... what's wrong with Christopher?"

"He was sort of mean to me this morning," Emily responds, giving a small frown as she thinks back to earlier, "And he has no sense of humor. He acted like it was insulting for me to want to give him a nickname."

"Names mean a lot where he comes from," Riku explains, "It's a big part of his identity. And in what way was he 'mean to you'?"

"He called me a whiner," Emily states, coldly and directly. Riku looks at her intently for a few seconds before trying to hold back his laughter. Emily starts to feel sort of insulted by this, but she does her best to hold back her protests. She can't argue with Riku about his behavior or she will look bad to him and take her further away from her goal.

"Sorry, sorry," Riku apologizes, "I can see why he'd think that, though."

"You think I'm a whiner?" Emily asks. This can't possibly be good for getting Riku on her side.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of," Riku explains, "I understand that you're a bit disoriented and confused."

"Yeah," Emily says, thankful that Riku provided a way out, "I'm sorry if I complain too much."

"Don't worry about it," Riku responds.

"Are you doing anything tonight?" Emily asks.

"Paperwork and stuff," Riku answers, "Sora and I volunteered for part time positions. Anyway, I'm still concerned about your rejection of the people I introduced you to. I didn't have a psychological profile or anything to go by, but your profile mentioned video games as a hobby you used to have back in your old world, so I tried to set you up with people that appreciate them. If you want, I could introduce you to some other people. They probably won't be as nice as these, though, and I still want you to try to be there for Chou. I know you have difficulties with talking to people and I know that Chou makes you feel uncomfortable, but please try your best."

"Well... okay," Emily concedes. She finds it sort of condescending and a bit forceful for Riku to talk to her like this, but what can she do? She's banned from complaining lest she ruin her chances with him.

"You should probably read the rest of the book and go to bed," Riku suggests.

"I guess," Emily says, turning towards Sora and Kairi, "It was nice seeing everybody. Please don't quit, Kairi. I like seeing you here."

"I promise, Kiko," Kairi says enthusiastically.

"I'm really tired, so I think I'll go to bed early," Emily says, getting up, "I'll see you in Basic Training tomorrow, Riku. Good night."

"Sweet dreams," Sora responds as everybody gives a small wave. Emily will have to remember that gesture for the future. Little things like that are what groups are all about. She smiles to herself as she walks back towards her room, thoughts of the inevitable future with Riku on her mind.


	22. Origami Craftwork

Michael Selacia is a teacher at Hometown, USA. He is an alumni of Big City University, with a Bachelor's Degree in History and a concentration in Education. His credentials are fourteen years teaching high school, during which time, he earned the State Award for Exceptional Teaching and was the primary proponent towards six school grants. However, this was when he taught at Local Village High School, a place with a reasonably bright, kind-hearted populace and all the other teachers at the school were just as passionate about education. Due to the turbulent economy and his wife's autoimmune disease, he reluctantly took an offer from Hometown for twice his old salary. However, unlike Local Village, Hometown's students are all yuppies that have parents abusing the corrupt system to float their spoiled, bratty children through. Not a day went by where Selacia didn't wish to quit his job on the spot and return back to Local Village, a place where he was seen as a hero and where he felt he made a real difference.

His passion for teaching long since crushed by soccer moms, executive dads, and students getting away with downright criminal acts in front of his eyes, he has just accepted that he's only in it for the money. So long as he keeps the grade average high, leaves a few of the non-yuppie underperformers out to dry, and doesn't tell anybody about the system he's reluctantly contributing to, he continues to get that fat paycheck. Today is just like any other day to him. Go to school, argue with uppity kids who won't listen to him, give them full attendance marks while ignoring their pop quiz results, eat lunch, subject himself to more beratement, and go home to grade their assignments using what he refers to as the 'BSGC'. It's a Tuesday, close to Midterm Break and the kids are restless.

"Hello, class," Selacia says, disinterested, as he walks into the room. Three minutes before class and he's facing a rowdier bunch than usual. Figures, since it's close to break time and the other teachers no doubt just showed film strips. The freshmen are chattering loudly as they pass around a sheet of paper. Everybody else is just talking with each other, a couple of whom made glances towards him.

"I said 'hello, class'," Selacia repeats. Still more gawking and chattering. It only confirms that the other teachers just let them get away with whatever. His temper taken past the line, he slams his fists on the podium. This gets their attention, but instead of a respectful silence, they start protesting. Surely, since class hasn't officially started yet, they can continue to goof off.

"Now, now, I know you all have an opinion on what constitutes 'class time'," Selacia starts, "But I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree about passing period granting you the right to ignore me. Did your parents not teach you anything about respect?"

"That's funny coming from the man that yelled at Dana," a smug jock in the back row states. Selacia could almost feel his eye twitch as a level of rage starts to build up within him. It takes a few seconds of quiet contemplation before he grabs a notepad out of his bag and starts writing on it.

"Now, Mr. Fabre," Selacia starts, "What happened between me and Miss Billett is a confidential matter. While I'm sure you've heard gossip that no doubt paint me as some cross between Hitler and Skeletor, it is not only fallacious, but also a breach of school rules of conduct."

"Are you saying that you did harass her?" the jock named Fabre asks.

"I cannot confirm nor deny anything," Selacia says, tearing off the paper and folding it carefully into an origami angel, "I can confirm this, though. I am sending you to the principal's office for disrupting my class and spreading pernicious rumors. Take this note to the secretary."

"Wait, what?" Fabre protests.

"Principal's office," Selacia says, putting the note in front of him and walking back towards the front, "Now."

"Ja, mein fuhrer," Fabre says, picking up the note and his backpack before walking outside. As he exits the room, Selacia pulls out a cell phone and dials up a number.

"Hi, Miss Bagshaw," Selacia starts, walking towards the students, "I sent Scott Fabre over with a note... yes... origami angel, nine folds... thank you." As he puts away his cell phone, he grabs the phone out of the hands of a couple students that were trying to stealthfully text stuff. One student takes enough of an offense to speak up.

"Hey, that's my phone!" some preppy girl protests.

"And you'll be able to pick it up after class like anything else I choose to confiscate," Selacia states as he walks back to the front, "But I'm not going to put up with text messaging in my class. For one, it isn't silent in spite of it not registering in your heavily abused eardrums. For another, it's disrespectful."

"But it isn't class time yet!" preppy girl continues. Selacia ponders for a few seconds how to best repeat his message about respect, but is distracted when he feels something vibrate. He takes out a phone from his pocket and flips it open.

"Hey, that's Scott's phone!" somebody from the front row says, vindictive.

"So, it is," Selacia says, apathetically, as he reads the screen, "Good job, Miss Taylor, on avoiding my notice in your texting. That's actually pretty impressive, considering I can hear people breathing. Let's all have a round of applause for Miss Taylor."

"How can you steal his phone like that?" preppy girl continues. Everybody else seems too frazzled by Selacia's sudden authority to play along with the joke.

"Simple," Selacia starts, walking towards a girl in the back row, "I took it from his backpack sleeve. Anyway, Miss Taylor, your phone." The girl reluctantly peels her phone off from under the desk and hands it over to Selacia.

"Why did you steal his phone?" preppy girl asks.

"Oh, that's simple," Selacia starts, walking back towards the front and casually grabbing the piece of circulated paper out of the hands of one of the freshmen, "I know that the school has a big texting network. I also know that Mr. Fabre will just dump the note in the first trash bin he sees. Put two and two together and I think you can see what I was aiming for."

"But that's so wrong!" preppy girl states. The bell rings, signifying the start of the class period.

"Okay, class has officially begun now," Selacia states in a dry, condescending tone. After dropping the phones off on the teachers' desk, he starts reading from the piece of paper. "Oh, 'School's Out' by Alice Cooper. How classy. Tell me, which one of you had a third grader give you this piece of paper on the way to school?" No response. "Besides, this is inaccurate. It's not 'no more schoolbooks', it's just 'no more books', with the last word stretched to two syllables. I don't even get how there can be mondegreens in this really simple song."

"Huh?" somebody from the front row says.

"You know, this gives me an idea," Selacia starts, "I was going to talk about the Saratoga campaign, but I'm just going to accept that I'll have to skip the rest of the American Revolution and start the Civil War after Midterm Break. Instead, to borrow a stalling tactic from the other teachers, I'm going to talk about something that doesn't further your actual education. However, I will be grading you for it. Since the freshmen seem so enamored with Alice Cooper, guess what? We're going to learn some rock and roll history. You have a question, Mr. Leverett?"

"Are you joking?" the smarmy prep in one of the middle row asks.

"Does my inflection suggest I am joking?" Selacia responds, walking over to the teacher's computer and typing some stuff, "We are going to learn about Alice Cooper, both the band and the man formerly known as Vincent Furnier. Please write down notes, which I will allow you to use for the quiz."

"Quiz?" smarm asks, incredulous.

"Yes," Selacia states, printing a stack of papers, "I mentioned that you would be graded on it, so I am holding a quiz."

"That can't be-"

"I gave you a freebie with your uncalled question," Selacia states, getting up and walking to the chalkboard, "But you're now stepping across the line. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, though. Anyway, Vincent Furnier was born February 4th, 1948 in Detroit, Michigan. His parents are Ellen Mae and Ether Moroni Furnier..."

--

The bell mercifully rings, ending the class. Selacia holds back his smile at proving that anything can be turned into total boredom if one puts their mind into it. Most of these kids aren't going to look at Marilyn Manson the same ever again, certainly. Forty minutes of straight lecturing on the life and times of Vincent Furnier with a ten minute pop quiz no doubt left a sour taste in the mouths of everybody present. As he takes the tests from people as they walk by, he hands back the confiscated phones. One geeky looking student, however, chooses to stay behind to talk with him.

"Yes, Mr. Vance?" Selacia asks after about twenty seconds of grading the papers.

"What are you doing?" the geek asks.

"I'm grading these tests," Selacia responds, "Just because I chose to teach a nontraditional facet of American History doesn't mean that I'm going to let people just slack off."

"No, I mean why did you send Scott to the principal's office?" the geek reiterates, "He didn't technically break any rules even if he was being a dick."

"Because, as you said, he was being a dick," Selacia responds, "I specifically set it up so that he'd get himself in trouble, though. I already know that he tampers with or throws away teachers' notes when he gets sent to the office, so I gave him one. All it said inside was 'Mr. Fabre didn't toss this for some bizarre reason, but I still want you to keep him there for the rest of the period'."

"That's unprofessional and manipulative," the geek counters.

"If I may," Selacia starts, pushing aside the stack of papers, "You're Jason Vance, investigative reporter for the school newspaper. Like most of the students here, you're abusing the system, but in an entirely different way. The school would absolutely love to get you banned from writing, but your parents flaunt the first amendment. I know you're intelligent and aware of this, so I find the fact that you're calling me out on unorthodox methods to be rather contradictory. Before we continue, though, I have something coming up in a short bit."

"What?" Jason asks. Within a few seconds, Scott Fabre walks into the room, a furious scowl on his face. Selacia holds the phone up to him, with a look of disinterest.

"How could you steal my phone like that?!" Scott yells.

"First off," Selacia starts, "I didn't 'steal' your phone. I confiscated it. Second, I don't have to justify or even notify you of any confiscation. Anything you bring to school can be confiscated at the teachers' discretion."

"God, I hate you," Scott responds, "I wish somebody would bash your kneecaps in."

"Threatening a teacher with physical violence is grounds for harsh academic discipline, Mr. Fabre," Selacia starts, "I'm going to let you off easy, though. One week of after school detention, starting after the break."

"Oh, bull-" Scott starts.

"I suggest you just leave before you further indemnify yourself, Mr. Fabre," Selacia offers. Scott gives a look of extreme malice towards Selacia, turning to give a smug smirk towards Jason before leaving. Selacia gives a sigh before resuming.

"These are the type of people I deal with day in and day out," Selacia states, "Anyway, I don't like the look he gave you, so I think I should drive you home today."

"What are you trying to prove?" Jason asks.

"You're a bright kid," Selacia starts, "I recognize that you're actively trying to make the world a better place. Please don't think for a second that I don't respect that. Unlike a majority of the people here, I trust you. As such, I'm willing to let you in on my plan, but this is strictly off the record. Are you okay with that?"

"Yes," Jason responds.

"Okay," Selacia starts, "I'm going to perform my first and only technical infraction of the school rules now. As Mr. Fabre alluded to, there was an incident where I 'harassed' Dana Billett. And as you might have heard, Jamie Lerquin was attacked, leading to hospitalization with a broken trachea. You have heard of this, correct?"

"Sort of," Jason responds, "I just heard she had to go to the hospital."

"I caught Miss Billett in the act of attacking Miss Lerquin," Selacia continues, "You've no doubt heard of similar instances. All throughout her education, she's been linked as either a witness or an acquitted suspect of increasingly more horrific actions. You know that girl who committed suicide last year over the online boyfriend preying on her loneliness to gain her trust and then sending all her deepest, darkest secrets out to the whole student body? I had a friend do a text analysis with some people I suspected and as it turns out, there was over 95 percent correlation between the online boyfriend and Miss Billett."

"...wait, what?" Jason asks.

"This is the type of monster I'm dealing with," Selacia continues, "Although to be fair, I doubt the intent was to actually inspire suicide. It was probably just to humiliate the girl for the horrible crime of not conforming. Still, Miss Billett actually made jokes at the expense of her, treating her suicide as some hilarious fault."

"Why didn't you bring this up?" Jason asks, sounding horrified by the implications this revelation holds.

"I did," Selacia starts, "That's when I found out how deep the corruption runs. As you may or may not know, the school has a strict policy about teacher involvement in legal proceedings. I had to submit the evidence that I found to the central office. They promptly dismissed it, choosing not to submit it to the investigation. Since then, it's been mysteriously misplaced and both the local news station and the police have had all traces of the emails erased. This was when I decided to do a little research into Miss Billett. As you might know, her father is Senator Christopher Billett. What you probably don't know, however, is that her uncle is the primary criminal trials judge in this county. It's a bit hard to see, since it's on her mother's side of the family. Between the two of them, they wield enough power to insure that this school won't so much as even suggest that Miss Billett is anything but an innocent cheerleader."

"This is intense," Jason says, "But what does any of this have to do with trying to get people in trouble?"

"This wasn't just about getting a couple deserving people some punishment," Selacia continues, "Just confiscating the phones for a short period of time. Anyway, here's my plan..."


	23. MacGuffin Extractor

The rest of Emily's week proves to be uneventful. Her negligence of the assigned course readings in Basic Training has led to her being the favored punching bag of Sergeant Williams. Not quite what she really wants to be. It just seems so unfair to Emily how not just Basic Training, but all her classes require a lot of reading material. With too much reading to do and not the best comprehension in the world, she has to spend her 'Beginning Psionics' classes just to keep up. Luckily, outside of a single dream involving Teacher McMeanypants, there hasn't been anything really bothering Emily. How could he intentionally set up people to get in trouble? He should know by now that people slacking off behind his back is perfectly acceptable and to be expected. Also, there's something sort of creepy about his plans. What could he possibly do with their phones? Set up a way to eavesdrop on them? There's something just flat out wrong about everything and she can't help but think that her imagination is trying to tell her something.

Regardless, Emily isn't proving too successful in her ambitions. She can't quite get close to Riku, who just keeps offering advice that puts her further away. It feels like they're two magnets of the same polarity, with Emily's increased efforts only increasing the speed that Riku repels away from her. It also frustrates her to no end how she can't quite get an indirect answer about the underlying nature of Sora and Kairi's friendship. All these frustrations and the only person she really trusts not being too available has her practically in tears when she visits Professor Uina this Friday afternoon.

"Hello, Kiko," Uina says as Emily walks into the room, "Is there something wrong?"

"Oh, nothing," Emily says, forcing the subdued emotion out of her face. Dark red camouflage style patches is the order of Emily's shirt today, predominantly out of the belief that it will not register blood stains. Smart thinking, to be sure. The full body mirror certainly gives her some perspective to how it looks with her blue jeans.

"Well, if you say so," Uina states, taking a box of about 20 centimeters out of a shipping package. Emily notices the small unzipped haversack in the corner with some brass machinery in it.

"Is that the... um... thing you were talking about?" Emily asks as Uina hands the box to her.

"Yes, it is," Uina states, with Kiko opening the box. Inside is a small brooch, a dark blue oval cut gem inside of a brass inlay. No frills, no extraneous decoration, no real artistic appeal.

"What is this?" Kiko asks, "I thought you said something about an important machine."

"I want you to wear it at all times," Uina starts, "It doesn't matter where so long as it's within about ten centimeters of your body. I also included fasteners for necklace chains, hairpins, and bracelets."

"I won't wear this," Kiko starts, flipping the brooch around in her hand as she examines it, "It's too gaudy. Brass doesn't look good with blue. And there's no design to the inlay."

"It's a machine," Uina starts to explain, his eyelids sinking a little, "Brass has the highest conductivity of magic and is malleable enough to allow complex morphic properties. It's why nearly everything here is made of the stuff. You don't think I built all the machines here based on purely scientific principles, do you? Anyway, I added an extra feature to it. Names are power when it comes to universe outsiders like us and I know you're using a pseudonym. You don't look Japanese to me in the slightest. So I added a feature that will filter your psionic aura to show up as 'Kiko'."

"The colors don't work together," Kiko says, flinging it towards Uina with a bit of disdain, "I know you really want to get back to our crappy old world, but I can't be seen wearing something so unfashionable. Please get something in proper gold or a white metal."

"Look, Miss Tennenbaum," Uina says in a more direct voice, causing a jolt through Emily's spine, "Nobody here gives a crap about what you look like. All the students spend at least four and a half hours a day in constant physical activity. That's a lot of sweat, with a decent potential for some blood and definitely not a good way to maintain your hair if you're a normal person without tint. You're already obviously in the spirit if your red shirt with some hard-to-notice blood stains is anything to go by. Please stop arguing and _just wear it_."

"Er..." Emily starts, slowly reaching to grab the brooch as a feeling of discomfort washes over her, "How did you know my name?"

"I wringed it out of Professor Kern," Uina explains, his voice gaining a bit of calm, "I also got her to do a reading on your psionic aura in order to get the necessary data to add that feature to the brooch. Lucky for you, we're the only three people that know your true name. Anyway, it's important to prevent your real name from getting out. You don't think my belt buckle is for show, do you?"

"I never noticed it," Kiko states, fiddling with the fasteners, "What does this thing do, anyway?"

"Way to read my instructions," Uina says in a cynical tone, looking towards nothing in particular at the ceiling for a brief second, "Anyway, it's a brass machine, with a microscopic bit of mercury extract from a Heartless contained inside a lapis lazuli. As my notes mentioned, there are 42 Prime Heartless out there if my calculations are correct. Each of them is powered by a heart that manifests itself as a piece of coral when its host is destroyed. It lingers around for about a minute before it slips into the Realm of Darkness, awaiting the next passing Heartless to absorb it. The brooch is tuned to a particular set of harmonics that resonate with the coral and the Heartless extract fools it into bonding with it. All you have to do is touch the gemstone to it and bring the brooch back to me to extract the essence into a more permanent location. However, under no circumstances are you to touch the coral with your bare hands. Any questions?"

"Yeah," Kiko responds, clipping the brooch under a few layers of her hair, "How should I kill them?"

"It doesn't matter," Uina starts, "Shoot them, stab them, summon meteors on them. Just make them fall down. You know you've killed them when a bright flash and a pinkish heart appears."

"I remember that part," Kiko responds. It was

"The coral will drop somewhere where they were standing," Uina starts, "It's not consistent. Anyway, don't let anybody see you messing with the coral. While they don't know as much as we do about the Prime Heartless, they're aware of people succumbing to the darkness near the site of major kills. That's why they instruct people to vacate the area as quickly as possible should any large Heartless be encountered. Let them run away, find it _quickly_, and then run away yourself before they suspect anything."

"This sounds like you want me to break the rules," Kiko starts, playing with her hair a bit to try and get the brooch hidden. It's a pretty large chunk of jewelery and hell if she's going to be seen wearing it.

"Oh, I do," Uina starts, "But it's required if I want to finish my research and we're not doing anything bad. If anything, we're actually going to be doing a great service. These cores sustain the Heartless near them, which is why killing the Prime Heartless is more than sufficient to drive a detachment of them away. Some of the dumber ones that aren't capable of generating Corridors of Darkness will generally just stick around, mindlessly attacking everything until they wither away and die. My theory is that if we get all 42 of these cores, the Heartless simply won't be able to exist outside of the Realm of Darkness."

"Whatever," Kiko says, giving up, "How am I supposed to seek out these cores?"

"Leave that to me," Uina starts, messing with something on his computer, "I've already detected that somebody out there is trying to rouse up the Heartless. I've been following the readings in the Realm of Darkness to keep tabs on them and I'm going to try to make sure that we go on field trips whenever a Prime Heartless shows up. It's my machines that do all the charting of the Heartless to begin with, so it's not too hard for me to give inaccurate readings in order to insure that the paranoid management won't just send Sora and Riku exclusively."

"Whatever you say," Kiko says, not caring too much. At this point, asking questions just makes it seem more morally dubious. If Uina gets caught, she wants to be able to honestly claim that she wasn't in all the way.

The rest of the day proves to be uneventful. Sniper training is a lark, surprisingly enough. She underperforms in her other classes, but here, she's awesome. Miles ahead of the other fourteen people in the class, she's capable of hitting targets from practically any visible distance within less than a millimeter of a margin... so long as she uses a Barrett M82A3. As it turns out, the M82A3 is unlike anything that the Kingdom Hearts universe has ever seen. Everything in actual production in the universe is vastly different and not nearly as well manufactured. Luckily, Leon gave the school everything that Kiko was carrying as she entered the world, so they got digital samples and gave her the mesh outfit back. Kiko hoped that she was rid of the creepy ensemble, but not only did it end up back in her hands, but the administration even wants her to use it for all field work.

Thus, it's what she has to wear for the trip to the planet of 'Discord IV'. She considers herself lucky, since nearly everybody else got these yechy green camouflage outfits with armor padding and way too many straps. She's also been given permission to use her old knives and the dual Five-Sevens, but not the Barrett M82A3. Bummer, since the pistols seemed so ineffective against that Prime Heartless that could have killed Riku and she isn't quite comfortable getting up close to attack. Stuff loaded into her briefcase, she follows everybody else to the landing pad at the designated time of 20:00. She finds herself in a group consisting of Sora, Riku, Chou, and a bunch of other people she can't be buggered to remember.

"Hello, Kiko!" Sora says with enthusiasm, smiling widely and waving. He's wearing his traditional outfit from the second game. Lucky him. Riku is wearing the same green camouflage as everybody else. He almost makes it look good.

"Hi, Sora," Kiko responds, barely even glancing at him as she faces Riku, "Hello, Riku."

"Hello, Kiko," Riku responds, sounding tired, "Are you ready for this trip?"

"Yeah," Kiko says. Even if she isn't going to be Riku's companion, she hopes she can at least sit next to him on the ride.

"May I speak with you privately for a minute?" Riku asks. Just what Kiko wanted to hear!

"Sure," Kiko responds, following Riku around the corner behind the control tower. Not the most romantic of places, but anywhere is fine at this point.

"I just wanted to ask you a favor," Riku states.

"Anything for you, Riku!" Kiko states, enthusiastically. Could this be it?

"Please sit next to Chou on this trip," Riku requests. Disappointing.

"What?" Kiko asks.

"I'm co-piloting this ship with Sora," Riku states, "So I can't sit next to Chou for the ride. I know she bothers you, but please, try your best." Kiko wants to just unload her indignant rage at Riku. How could he willfully choose to go with creepy insect-girl over her? And he made this choice immediately upon learning of the field trip? It really burns to think of the implications.

"Sure," Kiko says, flatly and directly. She can't yell at Riku. Not over something like this. She knows better than to be direct about her emotions.

"I knew you'd understand," Riku says, "Thank you."

"No problem," Kiko says, "I'm glad to help."

"Well, let's go join the rest of the group," Riku offers. The two of them walk back to the landing pad, where the rest of the fifty people for this batch has gathered. Sergeant Williams walks up to the group, looking as dour as ever.

"Line up, maggots!" he shouts. Kiko complies along with everybody else, forming a 5x10 formation. He walks down the line to make sure that everybody is present and accounted for, doing a rare smack of the occasional person into a proper posture.

"Now," Sarge starts, "Much earlier than I certainly expected, we're going out onto the field. The more astute members of you slug pukes might have noticed that no real name was given for this planet. That is because we did not want you to try and figure out what is on this world. Your role is not to go shopping or try to pass off your fake IDs to the local bars. It is to go on this planet, search for the Heartless, and gather information. While there might not be that many uncharted planets left, we also want you to know what it's like to orient yourself in unfamiliar territory. Also, while I've mentioned this every single chance I've had, I repeat: if you encounter any Heartless at all, you will activate your homing beacon and take a defensive position until reinforcements arrive. Any questions?" Some boring guy in the front row raises his hand. "Yes, Jalopy?"

"Sir, where's the ship, sir?" the guy asks. Sarge gives a gesture with his hand behind him as a large space ship decloaks right in front of the group. It consists of a lot of sharp angles, lacking a paint job on its prismatic surface. It doesn't seem too exceptional looking, with just a giant rectangular body, two laser cannons located on the bottom, six engines located on the back, and a small head in front that no doubt contains the cockpit. Uninspired, not very ergonomic, and not at all stylish.

"All right, load up and lock in," Sarge states as the ship's loading ramp drops down, "Move! Move! Move!"


	24. Fade to Pink

Traveling through space is so much fun. The sights, the sounds, the experience, it's overwhelming to the senses. The majesty of it all is simply breathtaking, with such a natural, mostly undisturbed beauty. This dual sun system has a prismatic shine to it due to the interactions of the two light sources. Flying past the outer gas giants and their moons, one can catch a glimpse of the nearby red nebula. Not too much time should be taken looking to the side, however, as right in front is the asteroid thicket. With billions and billions of huge white rocks smashing each other into smaller pieces, it's a miracle anything is able to traverse its packed quarters. But fly through it they must, since here is where the great green planet and its two moons reside. So much woodland on the planet provides a contrast to the dry, featureless moons that orbit.

But what's this? A bright flash has appeared nearby, its rays searing the retinas of all within range. Within less than a second, a rapidly expanding blue and white spherical explosion starts to race out in all directions. As the destruction washes over, one feels not pain but just an overwhelming numbness. It is as if there simply wasn't enough time for the pain receptors to register. However, even the numbness doesn't last forever, the fried synapses in the brain bringing everything to a simple black.

**--**

Kiko wakes up with a bit of a shock. For a couple brief seconds, she thought she had finally died. However, while she's had dreams before that ended with explosive deaths, she usually had some sense of self in them. With this dream, she just felt not like a person, but a random observer flying through the solar system. A non-entity, with no origin and no presence. Luckily, she's back in her seat in the space ship... and Chou seems to have unwittingly slid a bit to the side. Her head resting on Kiko's arm is just a bit discomforting. Kiko tries to nudge her away, getting her back upright in her seat.

Kiko starts looking around the ship, trying to get some idea of how long she has been asleep. The inside is perfunctory, with unpainted steel with occasional brass being the order of the day. The overhead compartment has bags held down by black velcro straps, with a lot of generic grey crates with stencil spray paint writing. All the seats are made of cloth and only have a small amount of carefully contoured padding. The floor is made of removable grates, with the compartment below containing what appears to be some type of dune buggy. It must be pretty late, considering that nobody else is here but her and Chou.

Not even a minute later, another shift in balance within the ship causes Chou to slide back onto Kiko. This time particularly creeps Kiko out as instead of just coming to rest on her arm, Chou instead ends up sliding out of the seatbelt, rubbing down Kiko's chest, and coming to a rest in her lap. Kiko just sits there, unable to think of what to do. She was instructed by Riku not to wake up Chou under any circumstance just before the seating was settled, but this is ridiculous.

"Hey, wake up," Kiko starts, shaking Chou a little, "You're creeping me out."

Chou doesn't respond. Kiko decides to try yanking on Chou's antennae. With a jolt, Chou yelps and flails her arms around, hitting Kiko several times. Each hit imparts some pinkish flash of energy, passing right through the clothing and searing Kiko's skin. A huge amount of pain gathers around each site of impact, causing involuntary muscle spasms as Kiko tries to brace herself. As the pain grows to a crescendo, Kiko lets out a scream that cuts short as her body starts to go limp. She starts to hang forward into her seatbelt, noticing with her unresponsive eyes that Chou is still asleep and now lying across in the other direction. The pain starts to subside, along with all her other feelings as she starts to gain a bit of a free floating experience.

"What's going on... oh, crap!" Riku exclaims from outside of Kiko's field of vision. She hears a five note melody hastily vocalized as rapid footsteps hit the metallic grates. Chou gently starts to rouse from her sleep.

"Huh... are we there yet?" Chou asks, wiping her eyes. She looks so innocent in the action, completely unaware of what she just did. Kiko would say something, but all she can do is just stare forward and drool as her sight starts turning a shade of pink.

"Chou, quickly, help Kiko!" Riku states. Chou looks at Kiko, a huge amount of shock starts pouring into her face. Kiko swears that she could hear an endless stream of panicky apologies, but the sound starts to get drowned out by a high pitched tone. Sparkles start overwhelming Kiko's field of vision as everything fades to pink. Before, she was in agonizing pain, but now, it's actually kind of nice. No distractions, no emotions, nothing. Just pure bliss in the form of isolation from all the fear and pain and anger and-

With a sudden feeling of free fall, the vision of sparkles on pink shatters. The tone in her ears sharply drops off, with the rumble of the space ship overlapping it. Her sight returns by her vision starting out as a small blip in the distance and zooming inwards towards a vague blur. The light above her feels like thorns as her retinas readjust, the blur fading to reveal Chou and Riku crouching over her. The former has her hands in front of her mouth, a look of horror painted on her face.

"Are you okay, Kiko?" Riku asks, holding her arm up to check for a pulse. A dull ache washes over Kiko, that imagined feeling of a hangover rushing back in.

"Mmmrgle," Kiko says in response, dribbling a mouth full of drool. Luckily, it just tastes like normal saliva this time. It would suck if every single cure from a Feylinus required playing tonsil hockey.

"I'm sorry!" Chou says, bursting into tears. Kiko just lies there, waiting for the paresthesia to wear off. It only takes a minute before she's able to get up, spitting out the excessive saliva to the side.

"It's okay, Chou," Kiko states. She knows better than to accuse Chou of anything when she was completely unaware of her actions.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." Chou starts constantly repeating amidst sobs. Kiko turns to face Riku, who is frowning with intensity.

"Why did you try to wake her?" Riku asks over the cacophony coming from the pink girl. Even he seems to think that Chou isn't someone that can be reasoned with in this state.

"She was invading my personal space," Kiko states, coldly and directly, "How was I supposed to know that she'd go off like that?"

"I didn't think it would be an issue," Riku says, "I thought if I just told you not to wake her under any circumstance, you'd follow my directions. It's why I asked you to sit next to her instead of some other person."

"Why didn't you tell me she'd attack me?" Kiko says, starting to feel really angry, "I don't even know what she did, but I felt like I was going to die."

"I didn't think you'd take me seriously if I said that," Riku says, "Or you'd take it too seriously and not get any sleep at all. Anyway, I'm really disappointed in you. Are you so insecure that you can't just let Chou sleep with her head on your shoulder?"

"It's okay, Chou," Kiko starts, turning to face Chou for a second, "You can stop crying now."

"Please answer the question," Riku requests impatiently.

"It wasn't my shoulder," Kiko corrects, "Her head was on my lap and that was across the line."

"She had no clue what was going on," Riku starts, "Why didn't you just gently move her back?"

"I would have woken her up anyway," Kiko states, "And if I didn't, she'd just slide right back."

"You seriously need better priorities than your concern over 'personal space' on a cramped space ship," Riku responds.

"Chou, get a hold of yourself," Kiko states with authority, slapping her across the cheek. However, unlike the movies that Kiko has seen, this instead just causes Chou to fall to the ground, bawling really loudly and repeating the same incomprehensible, unpronounceable by human tongue phrase over and over and over.

"Great, just great," Riku starts, doing a crouch walk over to Chou, "She's in hysterics and you _slap_ her?! What the hell is wrong with you?!"

With Riku's questions, Kiko starts to realize what she's doing. A feeling of dread starts to wash over her with the realization that Riku isn't just mildly annoyed, but actively _pissed_ at her. This is completely ruining her chances at getting Riku to love her back. She must look horrible to Riku, having just blown off his instructions so casually. It takes all her effort not to start crying as well.

"...I'm sorry," Kiko says, tears welling up in her eyes as she tries to hug Riku, "I'm so sorry. Please forgive me."

"Get off of me," Riku says, pushing her away.

"I didn't know what I was doing!" Kiko exclaims.

"Of course you didn't," Riku responds, "Just... get a hold of yourself and go help Sora. I'm the only person qualified to help Chou, so I can't go with him. Tell him we're skipping to the next drop point."

Kiko tries to think of something to say, but decides against it. Anything that comes out of her mouth with Chou's hysterical babbling in the background is only going to make her look worse. She gets up and starts walking into the cockpit, wiping her eyes with her sleeves. She stands by the door, hyperventilating a little. She really doesn't want Sora to see her like this.

"Stop dawdling," Riku says after about a minute. Kiko decides to just walk right inside, ready or not. The cockpit looks just like one from an airplane, but with a large computer screen displaying the outside instead of a glass windshield. Sora is in the seat on the left, wearing a headset and with about seven seatbelts strapped over him.

"Oh, hello, Kiko," Sora starts, turning to face her, "What's going on in the other room?"

"Chou isn't feeling so great," Kiko responds, completely skipping every detail possible, "So we're skipping to the next drop point."

"Aren't we the master of the understatement?" Sora responds, flipping some of the switches and grabbing onto the controls, "Well, I guess we're off to the next point. Onward and upward! Tally ho!"

"Should I do anything?" Kiko asks, looking around the room.

"Just sit down in the co-pilot's seat," Sora responds, "I'm guessing Riku is busy if he sent you, so it should be okay."

"Yeah," Kiko says, trying to avoid drawing any attention. She sits down on the seat, trying to figure out how to get the seatbelts on. It takes her a little before she figures out that the one buckle is actually meant for all six of the other straps

"So... how are you?" Sora asks, turning to face Kiko.

"I'm fine," Kiko lies, "Sort of stressed, but I'm fine."

"Are you sure?" Sora asks. He looks genuinely concerned, staring at Kiko's face.

"Positive," Kiko starts, "Shouldn't you pay attention to where we're flying?"

"I've done this a hundred times," Sora casually responds, turning to face the front display.

Kiko just sits there, quietly pondering what she just did. She still can't help but think that she really blew it this time. If only she hadn't tried to wake Chou up, none of this would have happened. She watches the view screen as they pass over some large body of water. Something about the atmosphere of the world sort of bothers her. There's condensation on the camera that is feeding to the screen, but it's not quite clear. It seems to have a slight tint of red to it, just barely noticeable. It takes a while before a shoreline with a nearby meadow comes into view, a city really far away in the distance. Kiko can't quite make out the details, but nothing seems to be any taller than four stories and there's a lot of smoke emanating from it. Probably an industrial area. Sora starts landing the ship near a hill with what appears to be a whole side cut clean off, flipping through several cameras on the main view screen to insure that it gets a good footing without clipping the sides.

"We're here," Sora states, flipping several switches on the control panel, "It's been so long since I've gone on a trip. I need you to help cover me."

"Okay," Kiko says, fumbling with the seatbelt. Sora effortlessly takes his seatbelts off, then walks over to Kiko.

"This seatbelt is slightly broken," Sora says, "Let me get it for you." Sora places his left hand underneath the buckle, hitting it increasingly hard with his right. The seatbelts all snap off after several tries, whipping right back into their original places.

"Thank you," Kiko says, getting up and walking to a more spacious area. Sora walks over to a nearby duffel bag, unzipping it and taking out some white clothes.

"You're going to need to wear these," Sora states, walking over to Kiko, "I arranged a meeting with the town mayor, but this is an uninitiated planet for very good reasons."

"Um... okay," Kiko says, taking the clothes. She finds a white lab coat with a bunch of multi-color stains, a pair of flat lens glasses, and a pair of dark tinted ovular goggles.

"Wear the goggles on your forehead and the lab coat over what you already have," Sora says, beating Kiko to the question, "Anyway, we've got a planet to explore. Let's get dressed, warm up the dune buggy, and head out. Onwards to adventure!"


	25. Blind Me with Science

And so, Kiko and Sora start off on their journey. The dune buggy isn't quite like her mother's Toyota Avalon, with a lack of any shock damping or padding in the seats. In fact, it's downright cramped and uncomfortable. It must take buns of steel to sit in this thing for hours. As they merge onto a dirt road, Kiko can't help but think back to earlier. Riku didn't even so much as acknowledge Kiko on the way out. He just kept steady, unbroken watch over Chou as she slept across the seats. She provided a haunting mental image for Kiko, with her green outfit completely soaked and her breaths shallow and sporadic. And to think that this is all Kiko's fault. She is mad at the movies for making her believe that all one needs to get out of a state of shell shock is a statement of authoritative encouragement and a slap across the cheek. Why would the movies lie to her about something so damaging like that?

"Anything you want to talk about?" Sora asks, a bit of concern in his tone. His prying is starting to get on Kiko's nerves.

"What's so bad about this planet, anyway?" Kiko asks, "The way everybody talks about it, I was sort of expecting there to be a lot of poisonous plants that smell like pizza or something."

"It's better if I show you," Sora states, not sounding like he really wants to talk about it. Well, so much for Kiko's burning question. Time for more awkward silence between the two of them.

The town starts to gain some texture as the two draw near. It has a rather odd architecture, with lots of wood, steel, copper, and unidentifiable patchwork. Holes perforate the buildings, each with what appears to be a story behind it. Some are smashed, some are crudely cut, some are bullet holes, some are completely clean to a precision that no human could ever approach, and some are still glowing. The four story limit to the buildings don't look like any long standing tradition, instead appearing as though they were completely torn off not too long ago. A couple buildings appear to be on fire, but just a casual fire that doesn't spread, consume, or do much of anything indicative of a real fire. The streets overflow with acidic green and orange substances flowing into the steam emitting sewer drains. Nobody is visible just yet, but the sounds of metallic clangs, screams, and explosions fill the air from well off in the distance.

"You might want to breathe through your mouth," Sora suggests.

"Well, okay..." Kiko says, starting to get worried. The utter chaos ahead is worrisome, not just in its potential to injure or kill Kiko, but also in how casual it looks. There are no response teams anywhere, no sign of any attempt by construction workers to repair the damage, and definitely no military presence. It's as though nobody even cares what's happening out here. Is there a major crisis going on right now?

Sora and Kiko drive through this wrecked portion of the city, avoiding streets with wandering robots smashing stuff. Kiko is growing more worried with each street they drive down, but Sora seems entirely casual and carefree. Seemingly, to him, this city is just a huge annoyance, with broken bridges everywhere and a lots of stuff he doesn't deem to be worth the trouble to fight. It's starting to creep Kiko out. Is he really so confident in himself that he's willing to drive in an open top vehicle right into the heart of madness? So confident in his ability to protect others that he doesn't even need to warn Kiko of anything?

Eventually, the two of them turn onto a block leading to a walled in section. Two giant, spindly robots built out of dirty pipework, oil drums, and plastic tubing are standing guard. They have two giant cannons reminiscent of anti-aircraft artillery from World War I at the end of each arm, with the ends of the barrels blackened and cracked. Their heads consist of cylindrical oil drums with a couple hastily drilled in lens for eyes arranged in an asymmetrical pattern. They give this sort of creepy green glow from both behind the lens and underneath their chests, as if the iron isn't opaque enough to contain it. Two huge piles of cylindrical scrap metal lie on either side of the robots, their origin and use indeterminate. The gate is made out of rusty steel girders and busted up grates, with bundles of wires draped over them and a neon sign that says 'Welcome to Safehome 33'. The wall on either side is made out of white, decaying concrete with the occasional chunk showing a bent girder within. Lots of multi-color spills are splattered all over, appearing to be haphazard decorations at best.

"Okay," Sora starts, parking the buggy on the sidewalk by a nearby building, "We're going inside the wall. You packed your guns and knives in that case, right?"

"Yeah," Kiko responds, turning to face Sora, "I should leave it here, right?"

"No," Sora responds, sliding up and standing on his seat, "Arm yourself with them and hide them under the coat."

"What if they find them?" Kiko asks, "They're even looking at us right now."

"That's the idea," Sora responds, hopping off the side onto the sidewalk, "They consider anybody that comes in apparently unarmed to either be too stupid to survive or obviously packing something really dangerous. So, we go in fully armed with normal weapons and they won't even bat an eye at us."

"Well, if you say so..." Kiko responds, sliding out of her seat and grabbing the case from the back. She undoes the latch, takes out the fully loaded belt, and puts it on. She hops out of the buggy, walking alongside Sora towards the twin sentries.

Suddenly, the twin sentries spin in place, aim their cannons, and start firing loud shells at a steady rate. Kiko was worried that she was going to die, but a couple shells and some screeching noises reveal that they obviously aren't the targets. Turning around reveals a giant three story creature alien creature, its features indescribable as each shell detonates inside of it. Sprays of glowing orange liquid paint the surrounding area, much of it melting right through the buildings. Tortured screams from multiple voices cry out from the creature as it gets round after round put into it, an appendage blown off with each explosion. After twenty seconds of forward struggle by the creature, the last bit of structure finally explodes, leaving behind a flaming pile of orange bones and pieces of flesh. The corpse randomly ignites after everything settles down, leaving behind another casual, non-expanding flame. Kiko turns around again to find the robots back in their original positions, a couple hovering helper robots reloading their cannons and the piles of scrap beside them about two meters taller. The realization that the piles are their expended shells is rather creepy.

Kiko lingers behind a little as Sora continues walking towards the robots. She quickly runs to catch up, now worried that the robots are going to recognize them as a threat and unload a similar barrage. As the two of them approach the gate, a small floating orb of a robot approaches them.

"H-h-hello and welc-c-come to Sa-a-afehome thi-i-irty th-th-three," the robot stutters in a vaguely British accent, a lot of interference and distortion in its voice, "What is-s-s the pur-r-rpose of you-ou-our visit-t-t?"

"Political business," Sora states. With that, the robot starts showering them in piercing rays of green light. Kiko does her best to not let fear get a hold of her in spite of her desire to just run away as fast as possible.

"Ah, th-the male h-h-has a hi-i-igh magical in-in-index," the robot states, "and-d-d the fema-a-ale has two-o-o kinet-t-tic wea-ea-eapons wit-t-th ten rou-ou-ounds each, six-x-x reloa-oa-oads, and two bla-a-ades-s-s. Thr-r-reat index: could ki-ki-kill up to ei-ei-eighty-y-y people effor-or-ortlessly-ly-ly. You bo-bo-both pass the ins-s-spectio-o-on. Wel-el-elcome to Sa-a-afehome thi-i-irty th-th-three." With that, the robot hovers back into an enclave in the wall before deactivating.

"...what was that?" Kiko asks in disbelief.

"Not a whole lot works the way it should here," Sora states, walking inside the gate, "Anyway, a few rules. Don't touch anything, don't talk with anybody, and don't even make eye contact. Ignore all offers that are made and don't stop walking for even a second."

"Okay," Kiko responds, walking alongside Sora quietly.

The inside of the walled section is a lot cleaner than the outside, but still stained with a lot of oil. Lots of people wearing lab coats are wandering around, most of which are looking at their clipboards as they walk around. Some are carting around either lots of mechanical parts or lots of chemicals while others are escorted by more innocuous looking robots or alien creatures. Sora and Kiko walk through to the next street, an open market full of stands. Lots of chatter is going on as people negotiate with each other for the parts they need, using what appears to be the barter system. Walking through gets tons of offers from all the stands.

"Fresh cogs! Come and get them!" shouts a man standing beside a metric ton of clockwork gears.

"You two look like you need a robot helper!" one man standing beside a whole bunch of sparking, malfunctioning robots states.

"Come buy my mysterious artifacts!" a woman by a large pile of jewelry and artwork shouts towards Sora and Kiko, "Get two ancient tablets and I'll throw in a philosopher's stone free!"

"Do you want superpowers?" a man standing beside an upright body sized capsule asks, "Come get my treatment! Guaranteed super strength, with potential super speed, invulnerability, and flight. Side effects include nausea, light-headedness, occasional fiending for flesh, and incontinence."

"This place scares me," Kiko whispers to Sora, "What was everybody worried people would do besides run away?" Sora starts to respond, but Kiko rams chest first right into a short guy.

"Oh, pardon me," the guy starts, "Say, you're an attractive lady."

"Um, thank you," Kiko responds politely, not really thinking about it. Not really the best way to follow up something like that.

"I can tell you're unsatisfied with your love life, though," he starts, "When I accidentally rammed into your breasts, my machine picked up your pheromones. You're after somebody, but he isn't recognizing you for the fine young woman you are."

"Get away from me, you pervert," Kiko responds.

"I invented this love potion," the man starts, "Guaranteed to make any man wild for you."

"I said get away," Kiko repeats, trying to get around him. He keeps moving in to block her, taking out a vial of pink liquid from his vest.

"It's in beta, so it's free of charge," the man starts, "I haven't had any test subjects yet, but the theories are solid. It uses ground feylinus sacks and pearl extract, with some cherry flavoring to make it go down. All you have to do is-" Kiko pulls out one of her guns and shoves it against the man's temple.

"I don't have to do anything," Kiko starts, an icy chill in her voice, "You, however, have to get the hell out of my way and stop following me."

"Well, okay," the man says in a snippy tone, walking to the side, "Fine. If you're going to be that way, I don't want you in my study!"

"Good bye," Kiko says, walking forward and holstering her gun. Sora, having politely restrained himself, follows alongside her.

"You're never going to mate with anyone if that's your attitude, young lady!" the man shouts. Kiko shudders a bit at that statement, the words piercing her. She and Sora keep walking down the street, quite a few people less willing to shout towards them after seeing that display.

"I'm proud of you," Sora states.

"For what?" Kiko asks, "That man was a creep."

"A lot of people come here and actually accept these insane offers," Sora starts, "They usually either die or get horribly mutated. There's always something that is just too irresistible."

"I wouldn't take a love potion from a total stranger," Kiko responds, "I'm not stupid." Or that desperate, Kiko omits.

"Well, we're not that far from city hall," Sora says, "Anyway, you're my assistant. If you're asked anything, tell them you're not allowed to talk. Try and sound like you're lacking in brains."

"Shouldn't be too hard," Kiko responds.

"Thank you," Sora responds.

The two of them walk around the street corner to find a four story tall building with marble pillars and a one story stairway out front and a dome up top. At each street corner is a sentry just like the ones outside the gate, watching outwards at a diagonal angle. On either side of the doors leading inside are two more sentry robots, looking stoic as ever. Out of all the buildings, it is easily the cleanest and least damaged. It looks almost out of place amongst the backdrop of the dirty, damaged city. Kiko could easily imagine this building in Hometown. As Sora and Kiko walk towards it, they hear a voice from a nearby alleyway.

"Hey, brother, can you spare a screw?" the man asks. Kiko doesn't even bother to turn her head to look at him as she continues walking. "What, am I invisible to you?! Can't even spare a single piece of scrap to help me with my latest robot?! Well, screw you! Screw all of you! You philistines! No, wait, I didn't mean that! I'm sorry! I promise that my robot design will sell! No, don't throw me out to where all the lunatics are! I swear, I'll contribute to society! Let me go! Let me go! No, not the stun rod! Anything but the stun rod! NooooOOOO_oooOOO__**oooOOO**_!"

"What was that about?" Kiko asks as she walks up the stairs with Sora.

"Ignorance is bliss in this screwed up world," Sora says, sounding completely unfazed, "Anyway, we're here to see the mayor. Just let me do the talking."

"Okay," Kiko responds, walking inside with Sora.


	26. Political Science

Sora and Kiko enter the building, only getting a cursory scan from an overhead dome. It's quite nice on the inside, with everything highly polished and fancily arranged. Everything is made of thick mahogany, with a lot of velvet flags and high quality canvas portraits hanging around. Most of these portraits all appear to be of a single family tree, most of whom don't appear to have anything to do with politics. There are two sets of stairs leading up to a mezzanine, with a fancy guardrail ending in an orb. Classical chamber music flows through, its origin indeterminate and its composition unknown. For being the seat of power in Safehome 33, it's rather barren. There aren't even any robots around to man the empty administrative desk or change the signs. It's disconcerting, considering how much effort and manpower any political system requires. Sora and Kiko walk up the stairs onto the mezzanine, walking around the empty corridors and towards a fancy set of doors. Before Sora reaches the door knob, they open up on their own.

The interior of the room looks the way Kiko always imagined the Oval Office. There are two couches arranged parallel to each other and perpendicular to a large executive desk, a table between them. Behind the desk is a window, overlooking the filthy city. Portraits of various people adorn the circular walls, overlapping the fancy ornamental wallpaper. Most of the room is in a light shade of blue, the exceptions being the dark blue carpeting and the brown wooden desk.

"Welcome, Dr. Sora!" a man standing to the sides of the doors exclaims jubilantly, startling Kiko. She turns to find a tall man with nearly trimmed grey hair under a fedora. He's wearing a fancy brown zoot suit over a white button down dress shirt, with a fancy gold watch and a pair of shiny shoes. Quite a stark contrast to the rest of the civilians.

"Hello, Your Honor," Sora says, smiling and bowing, "It's nice to see you again."

"Oh, please, enough with the formalities," the mayor jests, walking towards the desk, "We're friends here and it's not like we're in public. Call me Flint. So, how have you been, my dear boy?"

"Oh, you know," Sora responds, making a twirling motion with two of his fingers, "Busy, busy, busy. Lots of research to be done, so little time. You know how it is. So, do you have any leads?"

"I'm glad you asked," Flint starts, pulling out a small tray of cups with a bottle of orangish brown liquid, "I have quite a number of people for you to look into. Care for a glass of brandy?"

"No, thanks," Sora states politely as he casually flops onto a couch. Kiko apprehensively sits down beside him, reclining into the very plush and comfortable leather. The mayor certainly does live large.

"Well, if you insist," Flint responds, placing the tray back out of sight and pulling out a stack of papers, "I admire a clear thinker. So, you're back here looking for Heartless, am I right?"

"Of course," Sora responds.

"Well, just like last time, nobody has been bragging about their Heartless experiments," Flint starts, walking around and sitting down on the couch opposite of Sora, "But I do have some other criminal leads. I'm sure if you start from one of these, you can find the Heartless."

"Sure thing," Sora starts, "I'm always happy to help with the criminal problem of this world. They tend to have the Heartless involved, so it directly contributes to my research."

"First up is this man," Flint starts, handing a dossier over to Sora, "He's a real piece of work. Feylinus poacher, specializes in queens and princesses. I don't think I've ever heard of a more soulless, despicable man. He's been causing a shortage of gold, silver, and platinum due to his barter policy only accepting those commodities. We also believe that he's responsible for the murders of several people. Unfortunately, he gets a lot of business here due to most people being unaware of the embargo. Thankfully, he hasn't actively tried to spread the knowledge of other worlds, most likely due to not wanting competition."

"I'll keep this one for future investigation," Sora states, handing the file over to Kiko. The photo on the front is rather disconcerting, showing a corpulent man with a lot of stubble holding a dead feylinus that looks just like Chou on a meat hook... and laughing about it. The pink stains in his black hazard suit give a sense of malaise about him. However, the real creepy part is just how completely ecstatic he seems. He really looks like he enjoys killing them.

"Next up is this man," Flint continues, handing another dossier over, "We ejected him from the city about eight months ago when he tested a fusion bomb on a sentry. A lot of people were caught in the explosion and had to be regenerated. He claimed he would get revenge on us. Current intelligence shows that he's working on something major outside the city limits."

"He sounds like a good lead," Sora states, handing the dossier over to Kiko. This man is just a boring old guy with male pattern baldness, wearing a lab coat and holding a cylindrical cell with a glowing sphere of explosion going on inside. One can only imagine what would happen if it was dropped.

"This one is a rather interesting case," Flint continues, handing over another file, "She's a biologist, researching metaphysical connections. She suddenly went past the lunatic threshold a week ago, claiming that a 'vast evil' was out to get her. We believe she's breeding something outside the city limits."

"Sounds like just what we're after," Sora responds, handing the dossier over to Kiko. The picture shows a middle aged overweight woman, her hair frizzled and patchy. She's screaming wildly at something not in the camera frame.

"Here's another one that might interest you," Flint continues, handing over another file, "He only showed up a couple days ago and most definitely doesn't come from this world. He completely and effortlessly demolished Safehomes 13 and 27 with high tech modular robots and laser beams unlike anything we've ever seen. He then went to kill a couple hundred random people across Safehomes 22, 23, 26, 30, and 32. No real purpose that we can determine. Did it all in less than six hours and hasn't been seen since, but it's too early to assume he's gone. We only have that one picture recovered at the ruins of Safehome 13."

"Hmm..." Sora contemplates, reading over the dossier in detail. Kiko, curious as to what a creature of this audacity must look like, scooches in a bit to Sora and looks at the file. The picture is a low quality, grainy, heat singed long shot with all the color drained from it. From what Kiko can make of the picture, there's a man wearing a haphazard white suit with a helmet flying in the air. There are some blocky looking things around, one of which is spewing a large laser beam.

"Think you can get him for us?" Flint asks, "He ruined the Safehome project. When we founded the first twenty, we promised that at least one of them would survive. He destroyed the last one of that batch. I want him dead or arrested."

"I'm sorry," Sora starts, "But there just isn't enough concrete information here for me to go on. However, if you get something I can work with, you can reach me by the usual channels."

"Well, okay..." Flint says, disappointed, as he exchanges files with Sora, "Here's another one. He was caught littering a couple times. We ejected him last week."

"I think you can handle him," Sora says, chuckling as if it were a joke. Kiko suddenly has a revelation.

"Um..." Kiko starts, doing her best attempt at playing dumb, "I... um... I have some... something to s... say."

"What is it?" Sora asks, faking irritation. If she didn't know better, she'd think he hated her.

"Well... I... um... I..." Kiko forcibly stutters. She wants to try for a southern drawl, but she doesn't know the first thing about it and doesn't know if people would catch on.

"Just whisper it to me," Sora unconvincingly snaps, leaning in to her.

"That creep said something about feylinus sacks in his potion," Kiko whispers. Sora pushes her away, turning towards Flint.

"There was a guy that tried to give us a love potion made with Feylinus sacks," Sora states.

"Oh," Flint starts, taking out a PDA from his jacket pocket, "Describe him into the microphone, please."

"Well, he was pretty short," Sora starts, "He was at eye level with Kiko's breasts. Brown hair, green eyes, sort of pale-" A loud beep interrupts Sora. Flint turns the PDA around, showing a fairly standard profile of the man.

"Is this him?" Flint asks.

"Yes, that's him," Sora responds. Flint turns the PDA to himself and presses a few buttons.

"Okay, I set up his ejection from the city," Flint responds, casually putting the PDA away, "Now, where were we... ah, yes." Flint picks up another file and hands it to Sora. "This man here also came out of nowhere and destroyed Safehome 21 with a collection of alien creatures."

"I'll look into it," Sora says after a cursory glance over the file, handing it to Kiko. The picture is rather disturbing, with creatures made of endless tentacles tearing apart every square centimeter in reach. The man commanding them looks like a heavily mutated human, with a couple tendrils extending from random parts of his body and a lot of huge green veins all over his pale skin. Interestingly, his facial expression isn't determined or enraged, but instead shows a lot of pain.

"Thank you," Flint says, picking up another file, "This one recently vandalized a local building..."

--

"...and this one was caught yelling obscenities just an hour ago outside of this very building," Flint says.

"I'm sure you can handle him," Sora responds, sounding exasperated.

"I think that's everybody," Flint says. Sora breathes a sigh of relief before putting his happy face back on.

"It was nice seeing you, Flint," Sora says, smiling fakely as he stands up, "Thank you for all this information. I'll see what I can do about your problems while I search for Heartless to apply to my research."

"Thank you, Dr. Sora," Flint starts, tidying up the other files into a stack, "I'm just so glad that there are still people willing to act as bounty hunters for me. I'm not exactly popular with the people and neither is the rest of my organization, as you can see."

"I'm happy to help," Sora states, ignoring Flint's musing over the lack of popularity of his policies. Kiko stands up to follow Sora, straightening out her lab coat.

"Are you sure you still don't want some brandy?" Flint asks, getting up and walking towards his desk, "It's so rare for me to have guests. I've had this same bottle for years."

"I'm okay," Sora responds, "Don't think I don't appreciate your offer, though."

"Well, okay," Flint responds, taking a seat behind the desk, "Take care of yourself, my dear boy."

"See you next time," Sora says, smiling and waving, "Call me if any of those vague leads show up again."

Sora and Kiko walk outside the office, the doors closing behind them. Kiko starts to say something, but Sora just starts walking briskly without any warning. Kiko has to jog a little to keep up, focusing on keeping the stack of files stable in her arms. She comes close to toppling the stack as she goes down the stairs, but her balance proves impeccable compared to what she's used to. After going out the door and around the block, Sora stops.

"Okay," Sora starts, breathing a sigh of relief, "I'm glad I didn't break the facade. I find it so hard when I'm around that man. He scares me."

"What did he mean by 'regenerate'?" Kiko asks.

"This world used to be normal about a twenty years ago," Sora starts, beginning exposition time, "There was always some underground war between the normal people and a race of brilliant but insane inventors. One of them finally built a machine that automatically revives and regenerates people. Using it, they managed to kill everybody not like them in less than a year. The world has gone down the crapper since then."

"A machine that revives people sounds like something we should get," Kiko responds.

"No," Sora starts, a firm tone in the word, "First, it doesn't actually revive you. It just makes a clone and transfer your memories and maybe half of your personality to it. Second, each cloning makes you more insane. Over time, it also starts to degrade your body. Eventually, you just start dying of cancer or something within minutes or even seconds of each cloning until you're just a pile of mush that nothing can be cloned from."

"Oh," Kiko responds, disappointed. Immortality sounds like something awesome, especially considering the danger inherit in her job. However, if this is just the ultimate fate you face, it's not worthwhile.

"Well, then," Sora starts, starting to sort through Kiko's stack of files, "We have a lot of leads. Which one do you think we should go for?"

"That woman screaming about evil," Kiko responds, not bothering to think about it, "It fits the time when the Heartless were detected on this world."

"She's a red herring," Sora responds, "Your logic works, but in all my time fighting the Heartless, it's almost never the obvious lead. But I still follow them anyway."

"If you know it's a bad lead, why follow it?" Kiko asks.

"Even if it's a bad lead," Sora starts, "Following it usually involves us in the real action and often reveals other problems we can help with. However, what other lead do you think we should follow?"

"Probably that guy that blew up stuff," Kiko responds "Big project sounds like something that the Heartless would gather around."

"That's guaranteed to be the real lead," Sora starts, "But we're going to follow the insane woman anyway. Anyway, let's head back to the buggy."

"Okay," Kiko responds, following Sora. Time to go interview a screaming mad woman and hopefully save the day.


	27. Steel Justice

Kiko and Sora head back to the buggy, ignoring more offers of wondrous devices and miracle treatments. It's really starting to irritate Kiko to no end how aggressive these people are. Why can't they just put a sign up and be done with it? It's not like many people are going to randomly decide that yes, they do need a new garage opener that only has an artificial intelligence failure rate of five percent. Oh, well. With another shower of light, they get cleared to leave the city. Sora wastes no time getting back to the dune buggy.

"Is it just me or is there a whole lot more of that orange stuff?" Kiko asks, checking the area. The streets just past the buggy are now positively dripping with the orange incendiary liquid. A couple small patches of ground that isn't covered in it is completely black, obviously singed from all the heavy artillery. Luckily, the dune buggy is left untouched. Sora sure knew where to park it.

"Some more of those aliens probably bit it around there," Sora states, opening the trunk of the buggy and pulling a large case out. He closes the trunk, sliding the case across and hopping on top. He sits down in a pseudo-lotus position and opens the case, revealing a built in laptop computer.

"Want me to put the files down by you?" Kiko asks, stabilize her stack of papers.

"Yeah, sure," Sora responds, starting to type stuff in. After Kiko puts the files down, he gets to work. He seems quite determined, going through several programs at once while occasionally glancing over at the files. Kiko stands there silently for a few minutes before deciding to speak up.

"Want me to do anything?" Kiko asks.

"Please wait," Sora responds, "I'm trying to figure out where our lead is."

"Okay," Kiko responds, leaning against the buggy. She's still a bit miffed about the comments of that earlier guy. How dare he accuse Kiko of being incapable of attracting Riku. Does he think that Kiko is some shrew that no man could ever like? That's just untrue. Riku simply needs time to realize what a special person Kiko is. It's not like he's instantly going to fall head over heels for her and she knows this just as well as anybody. That machine and its claim to know her pheromones is preposterous, with the solution of some 'love potion' even moreso. Still, the hurtful comment stabs at her and the only way to possibly ignore it is to talk with Sora about something else.

"So..." Kiko starts, trying to think of a conversation topic, "How do you think this place is as clean as it is if it's always under attack?"

"The acid rain washes it away," Sora responds, flatly and directly. The tone suggests that he really doesn't care to talk, not even glancing away from the screen for a second. So unlike the Sora that Kiko controlled in two videogames. Now there's a conversation topic.

"So, um..." Kiko starts, carefully choosing her words, "When did you get so serious?"

"I don't understand what you mean," Sora responds, glancing over to Kiko while still typing.

"Well," Kiko starts, "I just remember you as always being some big jokester all the time in the games. You just sort of went where you wanted and stuff happened. Now, you're just sitting here and doing something on the computer, taking all the randomness out of this job. What happened?"

"I grew up," Sora responds, stopping his typing, "I don't know how accurate the games from your world are, but in my early days, I just coasted along on pure luck. It was luck that gave me the keyblade. Luck sent me to Traverse Town. Luck got me together with Donald and Goofy. Luck and a reliance on my two friends got me through countless battles. And when I lost both the keyblade and my friends, luck had Beast escort me far enough to get them back."

"But you defeated Ansem," Kiko responds, "He was a really big and powerful monster."

"When I defeated the Heartless of Xehanort," Sora starts, "I just had the Stability Principle on my side."

"Stability Principle?" Kiko asks. It's probably in the black book, but she's long since given up on trying to read the entirety of it.

"The larger and more powerful a Heartless gets, the less stable it gets," Sora explains, "Xehanort was the biggest and baddest of the Heartless. So large, he had to spend about 90 percent of his magic quota just to keep up his form. And as the largest Heartless, he couldn't draw from any sources. He was also completely insane and didn't understand his own power. I didn't know all of this at the time, but again, luck handed me an easy victory. He could have won if he had just used his power to summon every last Heartless he could, but he didn't. He just kept throwing highly telegraphed bolts of energy at me before overdrawing from his powers to try and carpet bomb the area. As he tried to regain control of his form, he was just a sitting duck for me to stab into oblivion. It was an anti-climactic two minutes, where the biggest injury I got was spraining my wrist from stabbing too hard."

"That's a let down," Kiko says, feeling a bit miffed at this revelation. She loved the ending boss fights of the games, but to find out that the big badass wasn't even able to fight back is just so thoroughly disappointing.

"Then there was Castle Oblivion," Sora starts, "The less said about that fiasco, the better. I can still feel that emptiness from my memories as Roxas. However, after yet more luck and a splinter faction within the organization got me restored, I realized something. Not taking this role seriously was going to get me killed sooner than later. It took me a while to develop these skills you see now, but I haven't had to rely on luck since."

"But... where's the fun in that?" Kiko asks.

"There isn't," Sora responds, "But I learned that there's a time and a place for everything. When I'm on the job, I have to just repress my desire to do stupid stuff in order to just finish it as fast as possible and get back to my fun life."

"I guess I understand," Kiko responds.

"Thank you," Sora says, going back to his research. Kiko takes the hint and leaves him alone, trying to think of some way to entertain herself. It's around this time that she gains awareness of a pressure in her abdomen. Knowing what she has to do, she reluctantly bugs Sora again.

"Hey, um..." Kiko starts, "Where's a bathroom?"

"You didn't go on the ship?" Sora asks, trying to mask his annoyance.

"There's one on the ship?" Kiko asks. She hadn't really bothered to look around too carefully.

"There's probably something in that building next to us," Sora responds, ignoring her question, "I trust that you can take care of yourself. Take the disinfectant with you."

"Well, okay..." Kiko responds, taking a spray bottle out of a door pocket of the buggy and walking towards the building. She doesn't like the thought of going into such a filthy, disused building to relieve herself, but it's not like she has much of a choice. The building seems to be a former government institution of some kind, barely even standing from all the abuse. Past the broken down double doors, one can see a certain level of grime on everything, all the tiles cracked and several holes in the walls. Not only is it filthy and decrepit, but it also feels like all the color has been drained from the place. Kiko, filled with reluctance, trudges forward inside anyway. It doesn't take too long to find a bathroom, considering the format of the building dictates that it be within easy access of the public.

The bathroom proves to be nightmarish, to say the least. The floor is wet from the corroded pipes dripping water everywhere, a powerfully rotten smell emanating from everywhere. The stalls are all broken down, most of the toilets completely shattered. It takes Kiko a little to even recognize the urinals, almost feeling embarrassed that she walked into the wrong bathroom. However, it doesn't last with the counter-thought that there's not likely to be anybody walking in on her. She walks over to the one functional looking toilet, proceeding to spray the whole place down with disinfectant. After the place seems clean enough, she goes about her business. It only takes a few minutes, what with her rushing as fast as she can. Definitely not a scenic area to partake in and certainly not an experience she wants to have occupy a whole lot of time in her memory. With the lack of toilet paper around, she decides it probably wouldn't hurt to just tear off a vest pocket from the lab coat. Just as she tears it off, she hears sounds through the wall.

"Is this it?" a gruff voice asks. Kiko suddenly goes as quiet as possible, quietly wiping herself, dropping it in the toilet, and putting her pants and belt back on.

"Yes," a deep feminine voice starts, "820 kilograms gold, 313 kilograms platinum, and the carts for all of it. Do we have a deal?"

"You certainly came through," the man continues, "So, you wanted more princess sacks?"

"No," the feminine voice starts, "I want a queen. Alive and uninjured."

"That's ridiculous," male voice continues, "I can't capture a queen alive. What the hell do you think I am, a miracle worker?"

"The princess sacks aren't good enough," female voice responds, "I need more potent chemicals for my research into the mercury creatures and you're the only one that can get it."

"I don't think you appreciate my job," male voice snaps, "Feylinus are the hardest things in the universe to hunt. They're extremely xenophobic and use a lot of magic to conceal their presence. It takes a really long time to even find a sizable nest and even longer to figure out an infiltration angle. If I so much as even breathe at the wrong time in the wrong place while scouting, they will evacuate. Once I get in a nest, I don't have any longer than a few minutes before they'll start escaping. I have to figure out where the queens, princes, and princesses are and hope I don't run into too many soldiers along the way. I only manage to kill a royal once every five times, with maybe one in five of those being a queen. I can't capture anything more powerful than a soldier alive because even if I can contain their magic, they'll just commit suicide by total cellular apoptosis from the stress and become a useless, magicless corpse."

"I don't care," the feminine voice shrieks, "I went through a lot of trouble to gather all this precious metal. I must have a queen! Bring me a queen!"

"I don't like this attitude!" the male voice yells, suddenly calming down a little, "Although... I've heard rumors of outcasts. That gives me an idea."

"You'll get me a queen?" the feminine voice asks.

"I don't promise anything," the male voice starts, "But I think I can arrange a queen. Give me a month or two. I'll take this shipment as a down payment, but I expect double this when I bring the queen in."

"You're going to get me a queen?" the feminine voice asks redundantly.

"Yes," the male voice states, his voice getting muffled by the sound of robotic feet rolling squeaky carts, "Just get the metal. And kill the eavesdropper on the other side of that wall for me."

Kiko gets a sudden shock at that statement. After freezing up for a few seconds, she decides her best course of action is to escape. She turns around and tries to run, but with a sudden crash, a robotic claw shoots through the wall, grabs her, and drags her right through. Pain shooting through her body, her instincts reach for her guns. As she slides across the ground, she picks up three targets in her field of vision and hands acting autonomously, she fires a couple rounds into the heads of the robots. As her slide comes near an end, her body automatically launches herself up onto her feet with her elbows. As she lands, she darts her eyes around. Two more robots are on either end of her, each meeting an end with a couple well placed bullets in their heads.

A piercing wail comes from behind her, causing Kiko to spin around and fire a few bullets. The overweight woman holding a gigantic energy gun absorbs the rounds, each hollow point blowing a chunk off. One in the head, one in the throat, one in the pulmonary artery, and one in the heart. As the woman falls back, her gun starts firing on its own. A piercingly loud stream of energy tears apart at the room, leaving a gash visible all the way outside. Just as she hits the ground, Kiko's awareness catches up to her.

"...what have I... oh, god," Kiko says, her brain registering the dead body in front of her. She just ended somebody's life and she didn't even have any awareness in the choice. Not only that, it was with an extreme precision that scares even her. She doesn't know much about anatomy, but the four points are what she imagines have to be the 'sweet spots'. She looks down to the gun in her right hand, rotating it a little. Just as the full implications hit her, she freezes up. Her legs go limp, slowly bringing her to the ground. She ends up on her knees, propping herself up with her guns. Her eyes blank, her jaw agape, she can't even move at the horror of what she just did. Just sit there and stare at what her own two hands have wrought.

Sora bursts in through the door, keyblade in hand. He has this look of fierce determination on his face, an almost tangible glow to him. After checking the room, he relaxes a little, but suddenly goes right back into his concerned state when he fully absorbs what is happening with Kiko.

"Kiko, what happened?" Sora asks, desummoning his keyblade and running over to her. He crouches down to Kiko's level, looking in her eyes.

"I... killed someone..." Kiko weakly responds, her lower lip starting to twitch. The huge amount of emotion is overwhelming her senses, with the guilt and horror pounding away at her nervous system. She can't even form any cohesive thoughts amongst all the noise going on in her brain.

"You did the right thing," Sora starts, looking at the body, "It was either you or her."

"I'm sorry," Kiko responds, her eyes starting to water up, "I'm so sorry."

"Just look at the size of that gun," Sora starts, "And look at what it did to the ceiling. Would you have rather she hit you with that?"

"I'm so sorry!" Kiko exclaims, crying profusely as she drops her guns and embraces Sora, "Please forgive me!"

"I forgive you," Sora responds, uncomfortably patting her on the back, "Please, get ahold of yourself. We still have a job to do."

"I'm such a monster," Kiko starts, "What gives me the right to end a life?"

"I'll let you work this out on your own," Sora responds, gently unwrapping Kiko off of him and setting her back in a stable upright position. After making sure that Kiko wasn't going to fall over, he turns around to face the body.

"Well, you found our first lead," Sora states, carefully checking her pockets, "Now that's a coincidence unlike anything I've gone through."

"I'm... sor... ry... so... sorry," Kiko simpers, her tears subsiding a bit. Sora finishes the search of the pockets, not finding anything noteworthy. He gets up, walking over to a nearby table with a large bag. Unzipping it reveals a small stack of gold ingots.

"Well, you're rich now," Sora states, zipping the bag up and flinging it over his shoulder, "Anyway, this looks like a dead end as I expected. Even if she was working on something, there's nothing leading us to her home. Think you're okay to walk with me?"

"I... guess..." Kiko says, finally getting enough awareness through to respond.

"Let's get you back to the ship," Sora offers, picking up her guns and putting them in his lab coat pockets. He then holds his arm out, allowing Kiko to grab it and prop herself up. The two of them start walking out of the building, leaving the carnage behind them.


	28. Super Juice

Sora and Kiko are back on the road, driving towards the ship. It's a fairly overcast day, the clouds looking quite a bit more menacing than usual. The red tint certainly contributes, making it look less like real weather and more like a nasty batch of pollution. Looks quite ominous, to be certain. Kiko doesn't really hold any opinion about the weather, knowing full well that acid rain can't possibly be too harmful. It happened all the time back in her world and all it's done is ruin crops and throw Greenpeace into a fit.

"Looks like rain," Sora starts, a tone of quite a bit more concern than usual for the fairly common weather, "We definitely have to get inside."

"In...side..." Kiko weakly says, still fazed. She can't quite get over how she killed somebody. Sure, her given role is based around killing people, but not only was it forced on her, she always thought she'd only have to kill Heartless. They're acceptable targets and certainly not human. Even if they were, they feed exclusively on the life force of other people. It's quite scary that she didn't even have any awareness of what was happening. Just wake up with a dead body in front of her and a pair of warm guns in her hands. If she had been aware, she could have tried to shoot the laser gun out of her hands or something.

"Kiko, I know what you're feeling," Sora starts, "You really shouldn't feel so bad. She was completely insane and wanted to kill you. She wouldn't feel any remorse for her actions and to her, you were just a target. Why does she deserve to live if she's willing to end lives?"

"What... makes us... worthy..." Kiko responds, starting to quietly sob again. Why does Sora think that they are allowed to kill people? They're not on any world within their jurisdiction. Even then, there's no reason that they should be allowed to be the-

"Oh, no," Sora says, interrupting Kiko's train of thought. Off in the distance is a swarm of black, flowing rapidly towards them. Kiko can't quite make out any forms within, not really caring in any event. Sora is highly trained and experienced. He'll protect her. After all, he was more than willing to drive them through that insane city with giant killer robots and rampaging alien monstrosities. What's a pack of Heartless to him?

The black swarm continues towards them, some forms becoming visible within. Creatures made of a black liquid are gliding on top of a moving patch of inky darkness, some jumping up and down in a vaguely rhythmic fashion. The smaller ones are about a meter tall, vaguely childlike things with a lot of tiny tendrils extending all over. They look almost endearing with their big glowing eyes and their naive fixed expression, but the games taught Kiko that shadows are anything but innocent. Largely ineffective, yes, but not innocent. Among them are slightly taller creatures that look largely the same, but have skintight dark blue outfits with plates of armor patched over it. They're not exactly practical suits, leaving a lot of exposed areas. The actual composition of the metallic pieces are unknown, appearing to merge right into their skin. For all intents and purposes, it seems like an extension of themselves. Above them is a draconic red skinned creature, with two patchy wing, two beefy legs, and a long tail for limbs. It has a menacing face, with a lot of teeth and a narrow set of focused eyes. Not really the most potent group one can face in the games, but not exactly a friendly welcoming, either.

"Kiko, we have trouble," Sora starts, changing direction a little, "I know you're in shock, but I need you to back me up. Can you do it?"

"Back... up..." Kiko says, the words not quite holding any meaning to her at the moment. Sora looks at her for a couple seconds before focusing back on the task at hand. He holds out his right arm, summoning the keyblade in a quick flash. Kiko didn't a very good look at it back in the building, but seeing it so close reveals that she doesn't recognize it at all from the games. It appears to be made out of blue crystals, with a lot of hexagonal formations linking together. The hilt is made out of rounded clear glass, with a small silver chain ending in a blue crystal extending from the bottom. It vaguely looks like Ultima Weapon from the second game, but not quite as extravagant. He points it forward towards the group, with spirals of blue energy gathering around the front of the blade. After a ball of darker blue energy forms at the end, a loud crack marks its departure towards the group of black ink. The Heartless scatter as the sphere explodes in a bright fireball, most of them consumed in the flames. Some of the shadows, soldiers, and the wyvern evade, the former two no longer riding on a black patch. Sora desummons the keyblade and flips a few switches on the buggy dashboard, causing the engine to change its tone slightly.

"Hang on, Kiko," Sora requests, speeding up the buggy. He resummons his keyblade, sending smaller spheres of destruction at some of the shadows and soldiers directly in the way. It almost surprises Kiko that he isn't calling his attacks, but it always bugged her that he did so in the first place, so it's more than acceptable. With only the wyvern left to pursue, Sora gathers some blue energy through the blade. He reaches back, doing an arcing overhead throw of the keyblade towards the wyvern. The blue energy completely envelops the keyblade as it flies in a forward spinning motion towards the wyvern. However, the wyvern swerves out of the way at the last second, losing stability in its flight as Sora and Kiko drive underneath. It tries to snap at them, missing by several meters as it smacks into the ground with a painful roar. With nary a moment lost, it rolls back onto its feet and starts flying back towards its target. It takes a few seconds of barely keeping pace as it ascends into the air, flapping its wings loudly and furiously. Giving out a resonating roar, it dive bombs towards the vehicle with as much speed as it can manage. Sora quickly swerves to the right, swinging at the wyvern in an awkward manner. The wyvern evades, flying past in front of them with quite a bit more speed than the buggy's capabilities. It flies in front of them, giving an annoyed roar as it starts coasting and rising in altitude.

Meanwhile, Kiko just continues to watch without making any movement. She really doesn't have the right to end the life of any creature, even if it's attacking her. She knows her judgment is flawed. She knows she has high level autism and anti-social tendencies. She can't be trusted to be fair and just in killing anything larger than a mosquito. She'd impulsively kill people for getting in her way if she allowed herself to believe she has permission. What gives her that right? Even the Heartless must feel pain in spite of Kiko's earlier assumptions that their lack of humanity makes them a perfectly fine target.

Suddenly, the wyvern does an aerial flip and flies straight down. Sora tries to swerve out of the way, but the wyvern adjusts its path accordingly with an uncharacteristic panache. A small shock goes through the buggy as the wyvern digs its claws into the hood, roaring ferociously. It makes a snap at Sora, barely missing as it evades Sora's reactionary horizontal slash. Sora tries to make another slice in the rebound, the wyvern moving backwards to dodge. The wyvern stands upright well out of Sora's reach and starts awkwardly flapping its wings backwards, causing a great amount of turbulence that practically pins Kiko and Sora into the dashboard as the buggy slows down. The force is great enough that even the wheels sound like they're just grinding futilely into the ground. Kiko notices that there's some machine strapped to its neck under a large scale, with a tube of red liquid stringing out and going into the base of its skull. Kiko wouldn't have noticed this were it not so close and even then, it was just a bit of luck.

Sora eventually stops trying to keep the forward momentum, fighting against the gravity as he pushes himself upright onto his seat. As the buggy comes to a stop, he leans forward into the dashboard with one foot and swings towards the wyvern. It quickly ducks under the blade, launching itself off in a back flip as soon as its clear. The hood tears off with it, the wyvern also doing a upwards smash with its tail towards Sora. He leaps to the side, landing on Kiko's lap with a thud. Too fazed to care, Kiko barely even registers the impact or the buggy swerving to the side. Sora slides back towards the driver's seat, regaining control of the vehicle.

Kiko's deeper instincts decide that enough is enough and she should probably help Sora. She reaches for her guns, grabbing at empty air. It takes her a couple seconds before she remembers that Sora picked them up back in the building. She looks around the buggy, her eyes eventually drawn to Sora's coat pocket. She quickly grabs the guns, ejecting the empty clips onto the floor. Sora turns to her as she slams the guns into clips on her belt.

"What are you doing?" Sora asks, quite a bit of confusion in his voice, "Are you back with me now?"

Kiko just ignores Sora, leveling her guns towards the wyvern as it circles around. It seems to be waiting for something, keeping an eye on them as it makes its wide vulture-like circle. After a few rotations ends with it directly in front of the vehicle, it does an aerial flip and dive bombs towards Kiko and Sora. Just as it roars, Kiko fires two shots from each pistol right into its open mouth. With a sickening shriek of pain, it loses control as it starts spiraling. There's a sickening contrail made by the inky blackness pouring out of its mouth, dissolving into a mist as quickly as it spews out. Kiko pushes Sora off the buggy as she jumps off, both barely avoiding the violent crash. As the momentum of the creature pushes the buggy forward, its constant random struggle tears apart the engine into smaller pieces. Scales start falling off, dissolving into inky blackness before vanishing. Eventually, the entirety of the creature breaks apart, the pieces turning to black ink before evaporating.

As Kiko's brain catches up to her, she collapses back on the ground. She's horrified that once again, she killed something without any real awareness of her actions. Sure, it was a brainless Heartless that was being sort of a dick, but she still doesn't have any right to kill it. Sora walks over to Kiko, desummoning his keyblade and offering his hand to her. Kiko resume her quiet sobbing, deeply confused about both her morality and her actions.

"What happened?" Sora asks, "You seemed like you got over it back there, but you're back to this?"

"I don't know what's going on with me," Kiko starts, "Just like before, something came over me and I... shot it to pieces. Oh, god, what have I done?"

"I don't understand you," Sora starts, "You shot that giant Heartless with an even bigger gun when Riku was attacked without so much as even flinching. Why do you feel guilt now?"

"I never really thought of it before," Kiko starts, "The games made me believe that they are monsters, but seeing that one so close, it just looked like it was protecting something."

"Not to be rude," Sora starts, walking towards the wrecked buggy, "But while I'm sure you're concerned about this, you just need some time to work it out on your own. In the meantime, I'm going to look for clues."

"O... kay..." Kiko responds, feeling more sorrow at the comments. Why doesn't Sora consider her pain to be worth talking about? She just lost control to kill another living, breathing creature and all he's doing is rooting through the wreckage for something. He eventually picks up a small device containing four tubes of red liquid, all going into a dangling intravenous line. Sora brings it back to Kiko, careful not to accidentally drip any of the liquid on either of them.

"What do you think this is?" Sora asks, spinning the device around in his hand. All of the sudden, a loud beep comes out of the device. A bright white flash completely drains all of Kiko's senses, leaving her unconscious yet again.


	29. Hallmark Occasion

Once again, it's another joyous day in Hometown, with cheer blanketing throughout the town. Lots of kids are out on the streets, celebrating the first afternoon of Midterm Break. No more pencils, no more books, at least not for another eleven days. One kid, however, took the day off. Indeed, she's anything but happy, lying in a thick hospital bed with an uncomfortable machine invading her airways. The scratchy sheets chafe her skin, leaving her restless in spite of the weakness imposed by all the painkillers. In front of her on a small table is a laptop computer, offering internet connectivity and a text to speech reader. Without it, she'd probably go mad from the loneliness and harshness of the hospital setting. Surrounding her amongst the machines and curtains are a lot of flowers and cards, all of them from students and teachers of the school. Most of the cards are just a little cynical, what with the teachers forcing the students to write them. She could care less about the cards, though. Her one wish is still unfulfilled.

"Jamie," a communication system near the girl starts, "We have another teacher from the school to see you."

"Lovely," the speech synthesizer quips after some typing. Visitors are starting to get on her nerves, what with most of them not really caring about her specifically. Her parents are the only people that have visited her so far that meant anything. Within less than a minute, a tall middle-aged man with brown hair walks in carrying a briefcase.

"Hello, Miss Lerquin," the man starts, moving some of the flowers off of a nearby seat, "I hope you're doing well."

"What the hell do you want, Mister Sell Ah Ki Ah?" the speech synthesizer asks after some more typing, fumbling the foreign name.

"Well," Selacia starts, pulling the seat up and sitting down, "I just wanted to tell you about how things are going in school. I see everybody pitched in flowers and get well cards like I asked."

"Where were you during that parade of fakeness?" the speech synthesizer asks.

"I wanted to talk to you alone," Selacia starts, "School policy doesn't allow me to tell anybody about what I've witnessed without the express permission of the board, something they're not likely to give me."

"Some good you're doing me," the voice synthesizer continues amidst the furious taps, "First, you make Emily run away and now, you're not telling the police about this?"

"I'm sorry about Miss Tennenbaum," Selacia starts, "I really didn't expect her to run away just because I called her out on goofing off. I have a job and I will make sure it gets done."

"You're a real asshole," the synthesizer responds, "Even I knew Dana gets away with everything. Threatening her will get me killed to shut me up."

"Oh, please," Selacia responds, "Systems this corrupt don't come about when people are total morons. Right now, you're just another victim of bullying. Nothing too exceptional and certainly not worthy of anything but a couple paragraphs in the local newspaper. However, should you die, all of the networks will be on your story faster than you can say 'news at eleven'. The FBI will get involved, followed by Internal Affairs. The conspiracy will crumble, Dana, her family, and the school board will be arrested, and the rest of the country will start employing even stricter regulations unlike those seen since Columbine."

"Columbine was a dozen students and a teacher," the synthesizer starts, "What makes you think that a lonely girl like me will cause this?"

"You haven't been listening," Selacia starts, "You would only be the start of it. You'd be the martyr of a greater cause. The school is so thoroughly corrupt, you could never appreciate it. As a teacher, I get to witness the full force of it every single time I bring up an issue. However, it's a flimsy conspiracy. From what I can tell, it has no mob connections. Not yet, anyway. It's just a bunch of corrupt bureaucrats mooching off of government grants. It wouldn't survive under a microscope. This story has the perfect level of sensationalism for the media and the fact that it's a girl fatally attacking another girl would be a pretty big hook. Who has ever heard of such brutal violence amongst girls? In other words, you can be assured that the Billett family will do whatever it takes to keep you in good health."

"Just go away," the synthesizer responds.

"Please," Selacia starts, "I know you hate me. I'm an authority figure, after all, and this certainly isn't what I expected to be treated like when I graduated from Island City college. However, I am on your side. I wasn't just bullying Miss Billett when I said I would go to the ends of the earth to bring her to justice. I might have even jumped the gun a little when I sent an anonymous email to Michael Moore asking about the hypothetical situation, but he still hasn't responded. I'd much rather not involve him, though. He's a bit, I don't know... overzealous."

"I thought you were never in Island City," the synthesizer starts, "I remember that field trip."

"I lied," Selacia casually states, "Anyway, I just wanted to assure you that I have a plan. I brought some stuff to show you."

"Why do you need a plan?" the synthesizer asks, "Just go tell the police what you know and get everybody arrested."

"The police are in Senator Billett's pocket," Selacia starts, "I can't go to them. Nor can I go to the higher authorities just yet. We might be two major witnesses, but so long as Billett can have her character established as anything but the sadistic monster she is, we don't stand a chance of winning. Thus, what we need is more evidence."

"And how do you plan to get that?" the synthesizer asks.

"I'm fighting back with the same school rules that bind me," Selacia starts, "One key rule in particular, however, stands out. Students surrender all pretense of privacy while school is in session. It's a very important rule because we are responsible for the safety and well being of everybody on the premises. Obviously, this has some conflicts with other privacy laws, but they are usually considered to be void to an extent when it comes to school. Even a corrupt system like this can't ignore the tragedies at Columbine and Virginia Tech. Anyway, this flexibility in the law is the cornerstone of this plan. I consulted with a couple unaffiliated lawyers about this and they said I should be fine so long as it's made extra clear that this is for official reasons."

"What are you talking about?" the synthesizer asks.

"Today, I've been confiscating as many phones as I can," Selacia starts, opening the briefcase and pulling out a PDA, "Then I gave out time wasting tests so I could duplicate all the SIM cards before giving them back. I tied it all in with this cell phone PDA, which is programmed to receive only during school sessions within the particular cell that encompasses it."

"That's illegal," the synthesizer interrupts.

"In most contexts, it would be," Selacia starts, "But the school regulations specifically allow surveillance of any kind so long as it is towards impersonal protection of the school. I'd say a bully that broke your trachea would count. I'm hoping she admits to it through text messaging, but if I can find other people she has told about it, I can probably extract a confession out of them. If nothing else, the text messages should establish her character."

"What do you need me for?" the synthesizer asks. Jamie looks at Selacia distrustfully, not believing what he is saying. And why should she?

"I need you to hold your ground," Selacia starts, "You are right to assume that you will be under pressure, even if it won't be lethal like you think. Don't let them break you. Don't let them bribe you. If they offer a million dollars, refuse. If they other a billion, laugh at them. Don't let them offer you a consolation prize of condemning someone else you hate. Don't let them convince you that you are mistaken. But most importantly, don't let them get to you. Throwing a tantrum might seem like a natural response, but their intent is to discredit you and if you make a fuss, you will just give them an angle. You know that Dana Billett brutally attacked you out of pure malice. You do not need to emphasize it. Do you know who your regular nurse and doctor are?"

"Yes," the synthesizer responds.

"Refuse to take any medicine not given by them," Selacia starts, "Again, this is a flimsy conspiracy and from having met the staff, I know them to be good people. However, I can't dismiss the possibility that somebody might try to drug you. If somebody you don't recognize tries to give you anything, throw a fit. Press the emergency button, throw things at them, do whatever it takes. Anyway, before I leave, I have a parting gift."

"Not another card," the synthesizer quips as Selacia takes out a small box. He opens it to reveal a small ring with a princess cut red stone.

"I got a friend in the CIA to give me this," Selacia starts, "It's an outdated design and its code has been cracked by the entire intelligence community by now, but we don't need anything fancy. Anyway, it's both a microphone transmitter and a GPS tracking device. I'm going to be carrying a cell phone that responds to a code. I want you to make your text editor say 'testing two five' should you ever need to talk with me. It also has a secret feature, however. There's a panic mode that will send out an emergency signal. I want you to activate it should they threaten you, your family, or your friends. By that point, we have to assume they're willing to go through with it. Not only will I pick it up, but so will the CIA and FBI, both of whom will most likely pounce on it without a second thought. However, don't use it unless they make a serious, undeniable threat. To activate it, just twist the gemstone in either direction until it stops. I'll also be wearing one as well once they locate one built into an alumni ring. Any questions?"

"Why are you so full of crap?" the synthesizer asks.

"I want to keep you safe," Selacia responds, "I'm doing my best within these dire circumstances to protect you from harm and bring Dana Billett and her corrupt family to justice. I'm risking my job, my reputation, and potentially my life for you. Please, under no circumstances should you ever take off the ring. Do you understand?"

"Whatever," the synthesizer starts, "I'll play along. You're the closest thing to a friend I have now that Emily ran away. You know how depressing that is? Maybe it would be nice if I could die."

"Please don't say things like that," Selacia starts, placing the ring on her left hand and packing away the other stuff, "You have a bright future ahead. Don't let this bad turn of luck get to you. Anyway, I have someone waiting outside for me, so I'll be seeing you later."

"Goodbye, asshole teacher," the synthesizer responds as Selacia walks outside.

--

Kiko starts to wake up, feeling groggy and tired. There's a level of weakness permeating all through her body, preventing her from getting up or even opening her eyes. She has no idea what's going on, only vaguely remembering some bright flash not that long ago. Must not have been a lethal explosion.

"Yes, it worked!" some enthusiastic male voice shouts, "What a glorious day for science!"

"You were right," says a familiar female voice, "They were strong enough to kill it, but stupid enough to touch the bomb."

"See, the Heartless do have their uses," a deep feminine voice with a pseudo-British accent starts, "These aren't the right people, though."

"Who cares?" the male voice asks, "They're both projecting some type of field. They're fascinating specimens and we're going to take them apart to find out what makes them tick."

"You remember our deal," the Brit starts, "I reserve the right to a first choice. I choose the girl."

"No way!" the female voice exclaims, "She killed me! I get her!"

"We made an unbreakable contract," the Brit starts, "I supply the Heartless, I get first choice when we start kidnapping people. You can have the boy."

"No, I get the girl!" female voice shouts, "She killed me. Now, I can get revenge! She's mine, mine, mine!"

"You die all the time," the Brit starts, a bit of impatience seeping into her voice, "I need the girl for my project."

"No!" the female voice shouts, with a couple loud beeps sounding afterwards. After a few seconds of awkward silence that seem like an eternity, an annoyed sigh is heard.

"Idiot," the Brit starts, "You never realized that the remote control is just a placebo? Ha. Some scientist you are. It doesn't even have a battery in it. The Heartless are controlled by force of will alone. They follow whoever is strongest, which is most certainly not you. Here, let me show you how it's done." A whole bunch of loud footsteps start scurrying around, kicking up quite a bit of ground.

"What are you doing?" the female voice asks, her voice rising in altitude.

"Removing you from the contract," the Brit responds, giving a soft chuckle, "I'd kill you, but I know it's pointless here. You're going to make a poor Heartless, barely even a Shadow, but what can we do? You've been copied so many times, most of your heart is long dead."

"No, stop!" the female voice shouts, "It feels so cold! Make it stop! Make it stop!" After a lot more screaming punctuated by bizarre energy noises, it finally goes silent.

"I trust you're still with me, Dukakis?" the Brit asks.

"Of course," the man dubbed Dukakis responds, "What should we do with these people?"

"Put them in their car," the Brit responds, footsteps approaching Kiko, "Roll them back to the base."

"As you wish," the man responds. The footsteps stop by Kiko, a couple seconds painfully going by before she hears an unexpected word.

"Sleep."


	30. Valedictorian

Kiko wakes up, lying on a stretcher. Surprisingly, she feels quite alert for having been knocked unconscious once again. No blurred vision or wooziness. Already, she can tell that she's back on the space ship just from the familiar ceiling. Her periphery vision catches Sora and Riku nearby, with Chou sleeping on the row of seats opposite of her. Her face almost looks pathetic, with a lot of flushing and a glisten to the skin from the voluminous amounts of crying. Such a crybaby.

"Welcome back, Kiko," Sora says, smiling. Riku has this passive expression on his face, almost as though he's more interested in Kiko's awakening for purely clinical reasons. Not really a friendly reception.

"What happened?" Kiko asks, pushing herself up into a sitting position.

"You and Sora were captured," Riku starts, his voice completely neutral, "Your beacon activated when the buggy got smashed, though. So I followed it to a base, fought my way in, and got you out."

"Oh," Kiko says, disappointed. It would have been nice if he could have actually told her what he did, but he doesn't seem like a good narrator. In fact, he'd probably indulge in too much detail with little life in the telling. As far as she's concerned, Riku said exactly what was needed.

"What I found weird, though," Riku starts, "There weren't any Heartless. A lot of robots, yes, but no Heartless. The camera on the buggy recorded some Heartless before the smash, but there weren't any I could find in the base."

"So this isn't over?" Kiko asks. She would love to get off of this world, but apparently, she isn't quite so lucky.

"No," Riku starts, shuffling towards the cockpit, "We still have to find the people summoning the Heartless. So, now that you're both back, what did we find out?"

"I have a couple leads," Sora starts, walking towards the cockpit, "Did you find my research? It was in the trunk of the buggy."

"The buggy was completely destroyed when I got there," Riku starts, opening the door and walking inside, "The robots took it apart and were using pieces of it to make more robots. I didn't see your computer anywhere. I did find Kiko's equipment, though." Kiko realizes that she should probably follow the duo into the cockpit, sliding off the stretcher and skipping over.

"That sucks," Sora remarks, not really putting any weight in the statement, "But who cares? We have a whole base to investigate!"

"Not really," Riku responds, pointing at the monitor, "See that crater? That's where the base was."

"Wait," Kiko starts, filing inside, "You destroyed their base?"

"No," Riku starts, casually sitting down in the pilot's chair, "The idiot running the place actually had a self-destruct button, complete with a voice counting down. I was worried because it didn't give me nearly enough time to get us out of there, but it actually stopped counting until I was near the exit and timed itself for me to get out. It was bizarre."

"That's just stupid," Kiko responds, not feeling quite bold enough to take the other chair, "Think any of the other groups found anything?"

"No," Sora starts, sitting in the other chair, "I set it up so they wouldn't find anything. They're all just walking around in circles in the wilderness until we pick them up, pretty much. It keeps them out of trouble."

"I woke up for a little while we were being dragged to the base," Kiko starts, figuring that there isn't really a good way to insert this into the current conversation, "That girl that I... um... killed... she was turned into a Heartless after arguing with some other people. There was some guy named Dukakis and some British woman talking after that. The woman wanted me for some reason. She made me go back to sleep somehow."

"That's interesting," Sora responds, apathetic, "What does 'British' mean?"

"I can't stay in this school," Kiko blurts out, causing Riku to start paying attention to her, "I'm not cut out for it."

"...what?" Riku says, staring at Kiko. For someone usually so passive, he seems genuinely disturbed. Does he really care that much about Kiko wanting to leave? Maybe he's finally getting some compassion.

"I can't do this," Kiko starts, "I just can't. I thought it would be fun like the games, but I was wrong. I can't kill people. It makes me feel like a really bad person and I have no right to decide what lives or dies."

"Kiko," Riku starts, standing up and walking towards her, "Please don't be difficult. What do you think you'll do if you leave? You don't have anywhere to go."

"I don't care," Kiko starts, holding back her emotion, "I want out. This isn't fun at all. I'm the worst student in the school, with no powers or talents whatsoever. I can't keep up with my reading and all the teachers hate me."

"They don't hate you," Riku starts in an assuring voice, "They're impatient with you, yes, but they don't hate you."

"What difference does it make?" Kiko asks, "Master Williams beats the crap out of me every opportunity he gets. Professor Kern thinks I'm a crap psychic because I have no control whatsoever and insults me every time she sees me. Professor Runi said he'd disable the safeties in the simulation just to end my pitiful existence. And they're right. I can't bend or enchant bullets, I can't stab hard enough or fast enough to kill anything tougher than a Soldier, and I can't manage being part of any sort of team."

"That's why I chose you," Sora starts, turning towards Kiko, "You're in disparate need of a mentor and I was hoping maybe I could help you. The rest of the administration don't think you're right for the school, but I don't want you to be handed over to the Radiant Garden police. You don't seem like a bad person to me and they wouldn't give you a trial due to your dimensional outsider status."

"Kiko," Riku says, getting right up to her, "I'm sorry about earlier."

"What?" Kiko asks, now thoroughly confused. She's starting to feel like she's being interrogated. Why else would Sora mention prison just for Riku to all of the sudden apologize?

"It was wrong of me to snap at you," Riku starts, "I was stressed out from going back onto the field, you almost died from Chou's reflexive attack, and she had another episode from the guilt. I'm just really worried about both of you and I couldn't help myself. While you did disregard my request and make things worse for us, I should have told you what could have happened. I set you up for a really bad day and it's my fault."

"You mean it?" Kiko asks, overflowing with emotion. Her hero is finally acting sensitive towards her. It truly is a glorious day. Surely, this is the first step towards his realization that they are meant for each other.

"You just need a hug," Riku offers, holding an arm out. Kiko takes the opportunity, practically melting right in his arms.

"Thank you," Kiko says, overjoyed. This is the life. She could spend an eternity in Riku's arms. So strong, yet so tender.

"There, there," Riku says awkwardly as he strokes his fingers through Kiko's hair, "Sora, you're the expert. Tell me what this is."

"Huh?" Sora asks as Riku tosses a brooch behind towards him. Sora barely catches it in time.

"Hey, give that back!" Emily protests, feeling betrayed by this move. Did he just take advantage of her to get close? That's so mean.

"Wait, you knew you had this?" Riku says in a tone of disbelief, gently pushing Emily away.

"It's an heirloom," Emily lies, "Please give it back to me."

"This isn't just any piece of jewelry," Sora starts, flipping the brooch over a couple times in his hands, "It's giving off some kind of field."

"Kiko, who gave that to you?!" Riku asks, a mix of surprise and indignation in his voice.

"That angel gave it to me," Emily starts, "Seraph. Whatever. He told me never to lose it."

"You're lying," Riku starts, fully confident in his indignance, "Why are you lying to me like this?"

"Yeah, seriously," Sora chimes in, "This is just like Professor Uina's magitek and it's definitely doing something."

"Put it in a hazardous materials box," Riku states, "You have a lot of answers to give. I thought that vial of chemicals was just planted on you, but to find out you're smuggling things back? What the hell? Did we not make it clear how dangerous this place is? People die here all the time."

"What chemicals?" Emily asks. Sora shakes his head at her in disapproval.

"The Feylinus blood mixed with something else," Riku starts, "Do you have any idea how illegal that stuff is? Or how dangerous? It can brainwash people. The paper that came with it even gave detailed directions how."

"She must have taken it from that one guy," Sora starts, "He was trying to give it away as some type of love potion."

"I didn't take it from him," Emily starts, exasperated and panicky, "He must have dropped it in my pocket. You were there, Sora. I told him to get away from me. I even threatened him with my gun. I didn't take it from him"

"I wasn't really paying close attention," Sora admits, "But how did you miss it in your pocket all that time? It's pretty large."

"I don't know," Emily responds, "I just don't know."

"Well, Kiko," Riku starts, "I'm going to have to tell the administration about all of this. I'm so disappointed in you. What the hell are you thinking?"

"Something happen?" Chou asks in a flat monotone, walking inside. She's holding a towel to her forehead, her face still flush from earlier. Her eyes are bloodshot in pink, with a tired stare. Quite a sickly sight.

"Kiko tried to smuggle things from this world with her," Riku responds, flatly and directly.

"Oh," Chou says, weakly and apathetically as she turns to Emily, "Hi, Kiko. I'm sorry if I worried you with that fit I threw."

"Chou, I hate to burden you when you're finally back up," Riku starts, "But we need to make sure Kiko isn't smuggling more stuff under her clothes. I don't want to check her, so could you?"

"What?!" Emily asks, shocked. Chou mouths something, but her voice doesn't carry.

"Sora and I can't do it," Riku explains, "We're both guys, so it would be inappropriate for us to watch. Chou has to do it. I don't think a cavity search is necessary, thankfully, but we need your clothes. Chou can watch you change to make sure you don't try to hide anything."

"No!" Emily protests. Chou gives a sort of blank, wispy look that suggests that while she is surprised and unnerved, she doesn't have the energy to convey it. Sort of a stoner expression.

"Look, Kiko, you don't have a choice," Riku starts, his voice maintaining a level of harshness, "You've already lied about that jewelry. While we don't know if you're telling the truth about the chemicals, there's still the possibility that you have other things. We can't afford to find out what you're hiding at the wrong time."

"This is demeaning," Emily starts, "You want me to strip in front of Chou? Do you know how humiliating that is?"

"Oh, please," Riku starts, cynicism creeping into his voice, "You're a real pain, you know that? Chou isn't going to judge you. Are you, Chou?"

"Mmmmm..." Chou says in a non-committal fashion, staring ahead blankly.

"See?" Riku says.

"No!" Emily shouts, her eyes watering as she starts filling with emotion, "No! No! No! I'm not going to let Chou see me like that. You're being completely unreasonable here! Why won't you trust me? I don't have anything else on me. Do I look like I'm lying? Do I?!"

"Please calm down," Sora says, making small downwards motions with his extended palms, "We're all friends here, all right? We're not trying to be mean to you, but we are bound by the rules and right now, Chou is the only other girl here."

"Chou makes me feel uncomfortable," Emily states, calming herself down just a tinge, "And I don't know what she'll do when she sees me naked. She and her ways are completely alien to me."

"That's real graceful of you, Kiko," Riku responds, rather indignant, "She's standing right here, in case you haven't noticed."

"It's okay," Chou weakly says, "She's right to feel bad around me. I almost killed her."

"See, she even admits it," Emily says, having a brilliant idea flash in front of her, "I'd rather you watch me, Riku."

"Did you not hear me earlier?" Riku starts, "We have rules about-"

"I don't care!" Emily shouts, desperately trying to overwhelm Riku's common sense, "I won't let Chou watch me. No! What is wrong with you?"

"Fine," Riku says, suppressing his impatience, "Whatever. You're weird. Did you never have any locker rooms at your schools? Actually, no, don't bother. I don't care."

"You'll do it?" Emily asks, now surprised at his sudden surrender.

"Sure," Riku starts, unbuttoning his shirt, "You're paranoid. Do you think it somehow makes you less feminine to be seen by the same sex?"

"No," Emily responds, not really certain if she means it.

"Well, it doesn't," Riku states, taking his shirt off, "I don't even get how you could think that. I've only noticed the boys having problems like that, but you'll notice that even I don't have any problem. You really just need to grow up."

Emily chooses to ignore the comment, not really wanting to ruin the completely unexpected moment. Finally, she'll get to see more of her idol. Riku takes off his belt and lets his pants fall to the ground. To Emily's disappointment, he's wearing a pair of white boxers. To her surprise, however, there's quite a bit of scar tissue on him. It's perfectly forgivable, though. Emily could see it in spite of his clothes, but he's so well built. Such supple perfection in form stands before her, reminding her that all of this is worthwhile.

"Don't fade away, Kiko," Riku says sharply but non-aggressively, sitting down in the co-pilot's chair and buckling himself up, "Anyway, Sora, Chou, could you wait outside with my other outfit ready?"

"Of course," Sora responds, leading Chou outside of the cockpit. Emily just stands there for a little, unsure of what to do. She would love to just latch onto Riku and never let him go, but-

"Stay with me, Kiko," Riku says sharply to grab her attention.

"Oh, um..." Emily says, starting to feel a bit embarrassed, "What should I do?"

"Take your clothes off starting with your top," Riku responds, his voice gaining ten shades of disinterest as he goes into a blank stare in her general direction. Emily obliges, getting down to her bra. Riku does a bored rolling motion with his hand as Emily contemplates whether or not he included it in his request. As she takes off the bra, she holds the clothing forward for Riku to look at.

"What shou-" Emily starts.

"Drop them on the floor," Riku says, still passive, "Then hold your hands out for me to see." Emily obliges, spreading her fingers apart to show that she isn't carrying anything. Riku glances at her hands for a second, resuming his lazy stare.

"Undo your belt," Riku starts, sounding more neutral than ever, "Then slide your pants off with your thumbs, fingers spread apart." Emily, feeling more flush than ever, stands there for a little contemplating what Riku just requested. She's never been seen naked at this age before. Even though it's her idol that is getting the first glimpse, it still feels so wrong. What if he doesn't approve? It would be disastrous for Riku to find out he doesn't like her body while he's still so uninvolved. Still, it's not like Emily is going to get any better. After some back and forth thoughts, Emily works herself into automatic mode and complies, doing her best to occupy her mind away from the realization that she's completely naked in full view of another human being. She can positively feel her face burning.

"Put these on," Riku instructs, tossing his clothes to a different corner of the room. As Emily's brain loses control of the emotion, she frantically runs to the pile and puts the clothes on. He might be her idol, but she feels inferior and rather disquieted by his stare. What gets to her isn't so much the stare itself as it is the total lack of interest in it. He doesn't seem to care at all that he saw Emily naked. What is wrong with her? Is she not good enough? Maybe she's too fat now instead of too skinny? She could change. Or maybe it's the lack of scar tissue. Riku has quite a bit and-

"Come back in, guys," Riku calls out, startling Emily a little. Sora and Chou walk back, the former holding a steel box while the latter holds Riku's signature clothes in her free arm.

"How did it go?" Sora asks, intentionally avoiding the urge to look at Emily as he walks over to her pile of clothes.

"Kiko seems a little uncomfortable," Riku states, hitting the buckle a few times to get it to unlatch, "Is that accurate, Kiko?"

"A little," Emily responds, trying to force the blush away from her face. She'd much rather not let Sora or Chou get the wrong idea. Riku walks over to Chou, whispering something to her before he takes his clothes. Chou silently nods and walks out as Riku puts his clothes back on, still disinterested. Emily gets another startle as a loud clank emanates from the direction of her old clothes. She turns to find that Sora has latched the steel box shut, its seams melting into each other to form a cohesive cube.

"I put Kiko's guns and knives in there as well as that machine," Sora states, lifting the cube up.

"Okay," Riku responds as he straightens out his jacket, "Well, then. We have a lot of work to do and wasted a lot of time on this nonsense. Sora, I think we should do a couple fly by's over Safehome 33 and get some aerial footage. I'm sensing a lot of Heartless coming from that direction. What do you think?"

"Sounds like a plan," Sora responds, walking towards the door.

"Kiko, just... go wait in the passenger section or something," Riku requests, uncertain of what he should ask. Emily starts walking slowly towards the door before Riku stops her. "Also... I'm sorry I had to put you through that. Please understand that this was for the good of the organization and I had no intent to humiliate you. While I don't think you're a complete liar, we have to err on the side of caution when it comes to dangerous planets like this."

"I understand," Emily says, forcing herself into a smile. Riku winces for the slightest of split seconds before regaining his composure and going back to neutral.

"Get some sleep," Riku requests, "Being knocked unconscious is not the same thing as regular sleep, after all."

"Okay," Emily says, turning and walking outside the door.


	31. Reasonable Demands

Emily walks into the passenger compartment, taking the first seat she finds. She's rather mad that she lost the trust of the others. Looking back on it, she should have just pretended she didn't know about the brooch. However, the timing caught her off guard and she panicked. She just went for the first thing that came to mind and it turned out poorly. Not much she can do about it now. She can't help but still feel embarrassed to be seen like that. Not only was it too early in the relationship, but also out of distrust. She doesn't understand why they can't just trust her. Is there something wrong with her? She barely even notices Sora sitting next to her.

"Hey, Kiko," Sora says, giving a warm smile. His mood seems to have lightened a bit.

"Oh, hello, Sora," Emily responds. What does Sora want?

"Are you okay?" Sora asks.

"I'm fine," Emily responds, not really caring to talk about it.

"I'm sorry we had to do that to you," Sora starts, "I don't think you're trying to hide anything, but we can't take that risk. Not with a dangerous world like this. It didn't help that you lied about the jewelry."

"I didn't," Emily starts, deciding that the angle she came up with should still be fine, "It is an heirloom and that seraph did give it to me."

"It can't be both," Sora responds, "Do you even know what an heirloom is?"

"Of course I do," Emily starts, "It's a precious piece of jewelry. How can it not be both that and given to me by the seraph?"

"Not quite," Sora responds, "It's something your ancestors give you."

"Huh..." Emily responds. She never heard the term 'heirloom' to anything but prized jewelry before.

"You really were just confused back there, weren't you?" Sora starts, sounding apologetic, "I'm sorry. I wanted to just take it from you while you were still unconscious and ask you about it later, but Riku insisted on trying to surprise you. I can't say I agree with how he does things, but he always tells me that people are their true self when pressured. I think it's mean, but it gets results. Anyway, I'd give your jewelry back to you, but it's already in the box. We can't open it until we get back home."

"I guess we can't do anything about it," Emily starts, "Oh, well. I don't know what it was supposed to do, anyway. I was just told not to let it go too far from me."

"We are going to have to examine it, you know," Sora starts, "I'm sure Professor Uina will figure it out. I still find it weird that a Seraph would give you magitek instead of a properly enchanted jewel, but maybe he knew it would have set off a lot of alarms. That's what scares me about Professor Uina's creations: they can't be easily detected."

"I have a question," Emily starts.

"Okay, shoot," Sora says, giving his full attention to Emily.

"What happened in Castle Oblivion?" Emily starts, "I never played Chain of Memories all the way through, so I don't even know what happened in the games."

"Before I start," Sora says, "Do you know what a Nobody is? In full detail?"

"I don't know any more," Emily starts, "I thought they were the bodies of people killed by the Heartless sent through the darkness, but Professor Uina mentioned something about zombies. They don't seem like zombies to me."

"Uina probably said 'philosophical zombie'," Sora explains, "Anyway, when a Heartless is created, it extracts the Heart and gives it form. That's really why the term 'Heartless' is inaccurate. They simply _are_ Hearts, free of their binds. The victim is the real Heartless by definition. Anyway, the Heart is where your emotions and sense of self are, but people don't actually need it to function."

"I don't understand," Emily interjects, "How can they function without emotions or sense of self?"

"Well," Sora starts, "This is where the term 'philosophical zombie' comes in. Their brain knows how to react to most things without the Heart to guide them. If you threatened them, their brain would tell them that they are in danger and to escape as soon as possible. It might tell them that they need to try to appeal to you to placate you. However, they don't feel real fear. They are just acting instinctively based on how their brains usually treat the situation. That's what a philosophical zombie is: somebody acting emotionally, but without any actual emotion in it. There are a lot more Nobodies than can be counted. They're all around us, usually working in physical jobs. You can tell who they are because they hold no real opinions starting from when they get turned. They almost always become depressed and suicidal, though."

"Wait," Emily interrupts, "How can they become depressed if they have no emotions?"

"That's another misconception," Sora explains, "Depression is a mental condition caused by emotional imbalance, not an actual emotion. Having no emotions definitely leads to depression once somebody gains awareness of it. Anyway, getting to the story. Castle Oblivion was created by Xehanort and his apprentices. Actually, modified would be more accurate. They didn't know what was really happening when they turned themselves into Heartless, but figured out to their horror what they had done pretty quickly. They wanted to restore themselves, but they first had to figure out what a Heart really was to begin with. That's when I stumbled upon them. Using Namine, they experimented on me and altered my memories over time to see if it would affect my heart. After that didn't work out, they tricked me into entering a machine to experiment on me some more. Keeping my Heart safe, they turned me into a Nobody and brainwashed me to work for them. Luckily, the splinter faction eventually kidnapped me and put me through a process to restore me to normal, but I can still remember when I was Roxas. The experience changed me and not a day goes by where I don't have emotional flashbacks to Roxas. So cold and lifeless."

"That sounds bad," Emily responds in as sympathetic a tone as she can maintain, "I'm sorry that happened to you. Thank you for telling me about it."

"It's no problem," Sora responds, smiling, "I'll explain anything for a friend."

"Yeah," Emily responds, smiling back, "So, um... am I going to be court maritaled?"

"You mean court martialed?" Sora starts, "No. I'll talk with Riku and see if we can just say that we confiscated your stuff because of the chemicals. They're probably still going to question you about that jewelry, but if you tell them the truth, they should understand."

"Thank you," Emily says.

"I'm sorry we didn't trust you," Sora starts, "We haven't known you very long, you got into the school by a backdoor favor, and everyone is still on edge from all the Nobody spies seven months ago."

"Wait," Emily starts, realizing she missed something, "Weren't all the Nobodies besides the main guys of Organization XIII these grey, stretchy things?"

"Oh, those," Sora starts, "Perhaps the only benefit the Nobodies have is their lack of pain. Xehanort and company experimented with their followers, discovering that style of magic in the process. It's extremely painful, but without pain, the Nobodies could use it to full effect. Prolonged use of it twists your form permanently, though, so the leaders never used it. Not like they really had to, since they were all proficient in regular forms of magic."

"That makes sense," Emily responds.

"Well, I think we're done with the fly by's," Sora starts, standing up, "I'll go talk with Riku real fast. Give me a minute and come into the cockpit."

"Okay," Emily says, smiling. Sora walks back into the cockpit, closing the door behind him. Emily sits there, thinking about these revelations. Once again, her knowledge from the games fails her. It's starting to seem less like an advantage and more like a setback. No matter. It's nice to have Sora on her side. He might be sort of a wet blanket during this mission, but the hero of the keyblade speaking on her behalf is worth a lot. With that in mind, Emily walks into the cockpit.

"Hello, Kiko," Riku says in an apathetic tone. The main viewscreen shows an overhead view of a section of the city, a countless number of black figures running around.

"What's that black stuff?" Emily asks, already knowing the answer but hoping it isn't true.

"Heartless," Riku starts, "Thousands and thousands of Heartless. Probably every single one within the area. Whoever is leading them is a professional."

"Did you find the leader yet?" Sora asks, sitting down in the other seat.

"I'm still looking for the Heartless leader," Riku responds, pressing a couple of the buttons, "I found their controllers, though." The screen changes to show a view of a couple people on top of a roof. There is a balding man in a lab coat, a plump blonde haired woman in her late twenties, the back of a tall cloaked figure with horns, a rather grotesque giant with a lot of boils on his skin oozing some putrid liquid, a male cyborg with a lot of brass clockwork, and a robot carrying a huge backpack. They appear to be discussing some kind of plan, disagreeing with each other quite often. Riku switches to a view of a couple Heartless, all wearing lab coats. Some are carrying huge guns with a lot of arcing green electricity. Others have their pockets stuffed with vials of all sorts of colors, holding flasks of steaming orange liquid in their hands. Both types have small orange goggles covering their eyes and a permanent sadistic grin on their faces.

"Those new Heartless don't look too friendly," Sora starts, "That isn't their equipment. They've probably been outfitted by the locals. I don't think it would be too smart for us to get close to them."

"Kiko?" Riku asks, turning to face her.

"Yeah?" Emily responds.

"I know you think you're the worst student," Riku starts, "But you're still an incredible sniper. Could you give us covering fire on those lab coat Heartless?"

"I'm only good with that rifle I came in with," Emily responds.

"Come on," Sora says in an encouraging tone, "You can do it if you set your mind to it. You're a lot more talented than you give yourself credit for."

"But-" Emily starts.

"Pleeeease?" Sora asks in a drawn out fashion, giving an exaggerated tooth-bearing smile. Emily, a bit surprised at Sora's reversion to his old self, tries to hold back her chuckles.

"I'll do it," Emily responds, "I'll try my best."

"I'm sure you'll do great," Sora says, slowly going back to a neutral expression and tone, "So, Riku, how do you want to do this?"

"I think we should drop a couple bombs," Riku starts, "Disperse the crowd a little. Then we can drive through the middle towards the controllers. Hopefully, they're just holding back the leader Heartless until it's absolutely necessary. Kiko can cover us from the tower to the west. Speaking of which, can you call your contact and tell him not to shoot at us?"

"Sure," Sora responds, "I'll send him a message now." Sora starts typing something up on the lower left corner of the screen as Riku flips the screen back to a wide view of the area, placing the view of the controllers in a small frame to the lower right. The cyborg, cloaked figure, and woman have left, leaving just the man, giant, and robot. The robot is holding up a massive megaphone as the man shuffles through his notes behind it.

"Hello, citizens of Safehome Thirty Three," a muffled voice says, "Do I have your attention?"

"Holy crap, that's loud," Sora comments, turning his attention towards the lower right frame.

"But I can barely hear it," Emily responds.

"It's going right through the insulation of the ship," Sora explains, "We don't get sound from the viewscreen."

"Oh," Emily responds.

"I believe I have your attention now," the man continues, "As you probably noticed, I have a massive army outside and I'm not afraid to use it!"

"What do you want, Dukakis?" the voice of the mayor shouts back through a P.A. system, more irritated than worried, "Do you want materials? Test subjects? Research? Maybe your citizenship back?"

"No, Flint, dear boy," Dukakis responds in a mock imitation of the mayor's voice, "I just want to hurt you. Is that so wrong? You and your cronies laughed at my theories, but who's laughing now? Me! Hahahahaha! You're so screwed! Don't expect me to compromise. The scales are tipped in my favor. Even your new-fangled diesel bots can't stop me now!"

"I threw you out because you're insane, Dukakis," the voice of the mayor responds, "Your experiments with explosive plasma went too far. You were going to kill us all."

"I'm not insane!" Dukakis shouts back, "Why don't you just come out here, Flint, dear boy? Come crawling back to me. You know you can't stand up against this army. I'll squash you like the meaningless insect you are. It's almost easy!"

"You know," Sora starts, "Outside of the Heartless, this is pretty par for the course of this world."

"Stop right there, evil-doers!" an unidentified male voice shouts, only just barely audible within the ship. Ridiculously acute hearing really helps.

"Who dares?!" Dukakis shouts. Sora zooms in where Dukakis is looking to find a young boy who can't be older than fourteen or taller than 5'6". He's wearing a white short sleeve uniform, a small red lining around the neck, bottom, and sleeves. His white shorts have a red belt with a red jeweled buckle and the same type of red lining around the bottom of each leg. He has a red scarf around his neck, a white lining running around the edges. His headband features a gem with the pattern of six concentric circular outlines with small filled in circles at different positions on top. His long dark red hair has many flat ribbon braids, each with a couple feathers stuffed inside. Quite a distinctive looking boy, to be certain.

"How dare you?" the boy starts, pointing in the general direction of Dukakis, "You take advantage of these creatures to make them attack a city of innocent people out of spite? There are people in this city who just want to live their lives in peace!"

"Who the hell do you think you are?" Dukakis shouts back, highly irritated.

"I am the Cosmic Guardian Yami Ryuko, champion of justice," the boy continues, striking combat poses with his arms and flat palms at a rate of one per second, "Where ever evil may crawl up from the shadows, I will be there to banish it with the light. In the name of the Great Mother Cosmos, I will punish all evil-doers and that means you!"

"Yeah, you and what army?" Dukakis shouts back in a cynical tone, turning his attention back towards the city, "Pathetic. Not even worth my attention. Run away, boy! This doesn't concern you."

"What the..." Emily starts, "Too many new people. Seriously, why can't they just come out one every day or something? I can barely remember all of this. Headache!"

"That's just life," Riku responds.

"Okay, the mayor got all the robots programmed to avoid us," Sora states, closing the frame on the lower left, "Shall we start the bombing run?"

Suddenly, a large bolt of electricity sweeps through a bunch of Heartless. Sora zooms in to find the White Stars attacking the Heartless head on. Red Hawk is smashing his way through with burning fists as Green Falcon effortlessly slices through wave after wave with shockwaves going through the ground. Blue Harrier is flying around firing an assault rifle with shells that explode in blocks of ice as Yellow Kite calls down lightning and manipulates a tornado to fling the Heartless all around.

"Goddamn White Stars," Riku comments, typing some stuff on the console. Blue Harrier takes one hand off of his assault rifle and takes out a small communicator.

"Blue Harrier of the White Stars reporting in," Blue Harrier says, his voice coming out of a set of speakers. It's a bit confusing since Sora claimed the viewscreen doesn't get any audio.

"You're not supposed to be here," Riku starts, "Cease your attack and retreat immediately."

"That's a negatory, fellow hero," Blue Harrier responds, sounding both official yet defiant, "We have a code red imminent and we need to dispatch it. Over."

"I repeat, fall back," Riku barks, irritated beyond belief. Blue Harrier makes a scoffing noise as he throws the communicator in front of him and shoots a single bullet into it.

"Well, so much for bombing them," Sora comments.

"It's tempting," Riku starts, "Really, really tempting. I hate those guys so much."

"Okay, change of plans," Sora starts, "We go in from the west without any bombing. We'll stay on the rooftops so Kiko can cover us. Usual duo tactics just like old times. Kiko, you'll snipe all the lab coat Heartless you see on our path. Are we ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," Riku responds, standing up.

"I guess," Emily says, doubtful.

"Okay, then," Sora says, switching back to a piloting view and taking the reigns of the ship, "Let's get this show on the road. Riku, would you do the honors?"

"With pleasure," Riku says, walking towards the door. As he passes by Emily, he makes a motion with his hands towards her to follow. They walk through the passenger section, stopping by an overhead compartment. Riku slides a long case out, handing it to Emily. She opens it, taking the generic grey sniper rifle out and slinging it over her shoulders. She shoves the clips into the vest pockets, tossing the case aside and giving a thumbs up. Riku takes a communicator out of his pocket, clipping it on Emily's belt. The two of them walk over to the hatch, Riku grabbing a cable from the ground. He snaps it to his belt and grabs the control grip, checking the line tension. He then walks up to Emily and grabs her with his other arm, holding her close.

"Ready?" Riku asks. Emily nods, unsure of what he's doing. It sure is nice, though. Such a firm yet supple body. Her bliss is interrupted when a harsh gust of wind hits her from the opening hatch. Before she can even register what is going on, Riku lifts her slightly off her feet and does a running jump outside. They swing through the air, overwhelming Emily's senses as fear washes over her. As the rope catches and starts to rappel while they are three meters above the tower, Riku drops Emily. Without any time to react, Emily collapses and rolls on floor. Still, it has no real pain and she gets back on her feet within seconds. Riku summons his keyblade as the vaguely visible outline of the ship flies onwards, unsnapping the rope after a few buildings and landing with catlike grace. Sora emerges from the outline with his keyblade in hand, landing on top of the next building over. Riku does a running jump across the gap, meeting up with Sora. They do some vague poses with each other before Sora picks up his communicator.

"Let's get this party started!" Sora exclaims over the communicator, leaping along with Riku towards the chaotic battle in front of them.


	32. Two Thousand Pounds of Muscle

With little time to lose, Emily takes up a sniping position, going prone and using the nearby guard rail to prop up her gun. She finds the rifle sort of uncomfortable, its proportions and weighting not working out to her satisfaction. Quite disappointing that this is the pinnacle of the organization's firearms research and development. The rifle she came in with was great, with a totally even distribution, contoured edges, and a smooth swivel. The rounds traveled a lot further than she could even see with perfect, unerring accuracy and would blow huge chunks off of whatever they hit. All she had to do was point and pull the trigger to make something die. These rifles aren't even in the same league. Nonetheless, she has to adapt if she wants to prove her worth to Riku. Only one class period worth of sniper rifles hasn't yet taught her how to compensate for such variables, but there's no time like the present. Sora and Riku are taking their time as they survey the battlefield, giving Emily a good grace period for some practice. She sets her sights on a lab coat Heartless with a gun in a crowd, adjusting her zoom and focus. With sights set on its head and an approximate distance of 400 meters, she fires with a muffled pop.

The bullet doesn't quite go where Emily expected, clipping the leg off of another gun Heartless a bit above and to the left of her target. As it flails around in pain, Emily adjusts her sight. She remembers her instructor always saying not to adjust the sights to compensate for pull, claiming that crappy snipers do it and suffer for it in the long run. However, she just doesn't have time for this crap. Sora and Riku are counting on her to keep the path clear of lab coat Heartless and she can't relearn the wheel in less than a minute. With this in mind, she sets her sight on the struggling Heartless without moving the rifle, ignoring the frantic Heartless looking around wildly. That should do. Another bullet hits pretty close to Emily's sight, piercing the chest of the Heartless. It dissolves into nothingness, leaving behind the coat, goggles, gun, and a machine similar to the one on the earlier Wyvern. Not wasting any time, Emily sets her sights on another random gun Heartless and fires. The bullet hits a slight bit off her sight, taking a chunk off the right side of its forehead instead of going directly between the eyes. Accurate enough for chest shots, at least.

"Are you done preparing, Kiko?" Riku asks through the communicator, mildly startling her.

"I think so," Emily responds, uncertain. Not really the best way to respond to that, but why pretend to be any more confident than she is? It's not like she didn't tell them her problems. If she fails, she warned them.

"Could you shoot one of the Heartless carrying those chemicals, please?" Riku requests.

"Sure," Emily responds, searching around a little. It takes a bit longer than expected to find one, since they seem to be pretty uncommon. She sends off another bullet, hitting one square in the chest. It flails its arms as it dies, tossing the flasks upwards. As they crash into the ground, a bright orange explosion bursts forth. Their flames consume the other vials, causing a cluster reaction of multi-color explosions to expand the destruction to the whole rooftop, sending a large number of rapidly melting Heartless flying in random directions. A cloud of all the colors stays opaque for a while before dissipating enough to reveal the roof to have melted off, the top floor visible.

"Well, then," Riku starts, "So much for that idea. Change of plans. Kiko, just get the ones holding guns. We're going to use Stop and Slow magic on the chemical holders and blast them from a distance ourselves. Hopefully, the containers won't break when they drop them if Slow is on, but we're not going to take that risk. Anyway, if you have to reload, just say so and we'll hold our position for a little. Ready?"

"Sure," Emily responds, still uncertain. This is going to be her first real assignment and she wants to do her best.

"Here we go!" Sora exclaims.

Emily glances away from the scope to see Sora and Riku charge in, keyblades at the ready. Only about 430 meters before the first squad and she needs to keep the path clear of the gun Heartless. Her eyes back to the scope, a quick scan reveals two in the first group. The first shot blows the head off of the target in spite of being aimed for the chest. Rather disquieting, but bonus points, nonetheless. As the others start searching for the source, Emily fires another shot. The crotch area of the victim gets taken off in a painful looking manner. It proves just as fatal, although it doesn't react any differently than the others. This is really quite bothersome. Why is every shot so stray of its mark? There's just no reason for it. Maybe Emily is unconsciously adjusting her pull every shot to compensate for how the last one missed?

As Sora and Riku engage the group, Emily sets her sights two rooftops over. Only one in this group, but three flask holders. She takes aim and fires, completely missing her target. She wasn't quite so lucky to just hit the floor, though. One of the flask holders takes it right in the gut, smashing the glass containers together as it reflexively grabs for the stomach. With a loud boom, the chain reaction from the other two flask holders combines to generate a massive explosion. Emily even feels a gust of wind from the force of the detonation, the constant high whines of further reactions piercing her ears. She looks around to find Sora and Riku ducking for cover on the fire escape of the building, the cloud starting to roll over.

"Why did you do that, Kiko?" Riku asks.

"I missed," Emily responds. Simple and direct.

"You missed..." Riku starts, sounding exasperated, "Missed right into a dangerous one?"

"Well, it's true," Emily responds, "This gun is crap. I can't get it to hit anything I really want."

"Kiko, that's a standard issue gun," Riku starts, "If it was really that bad, it wouldn't still be in use. We have the budget to improve our weapons when we need to."

"Maybe all those magic people can make it work right," Emily responds, wallowing in her inferiority, "But this thing is horrible. I should be able to hit-"

"Kiko," Riku interrupts, calmly.

"Um, yeah?" Emily asks.

"Just keep shooting at the Heartless," Riku requests, "Don't worry about your mistake."

"Sorry," Emily says, realizing that she's wasting valuable time. Emily resets the view on the scope and takes aim at another gun Heartless. With no flask holders nearby, she takes the shot. This one actually hits right where she intended, blowing a hole out of its chest and causing it to dissolve into nothingness. That's a good sign. She lines up another target, firing a round aimed at the chest. The bullet hits a bit lower than intended, shattering a part of the gun the Heartless is holding. It activates, spraying a wild green beam out as the Heartless flies back from the recoil. It slams into the elevator access, the gun exploding in a bright green flash that merely leaves a small crater in the structure. Aiming at another Heartless, she fires... hitting just a tail of the coat. First total miss yet. As the Heartless searches around, Emily tries to fire another shot. The click of the rifle signals a dreaded conclusion: out of ammo.

"I have to reload," Emily states.

"Sure," Riku responds, "It's going to be a while before this cloud passes by, so don't rush. Stay calm and make each shot count."

Emily takes out the empty clip, tossing it aside and slamming a new one inside. A check of the area reveals the group of Heartless jumping across to the next rooftop in her general direction. Moving targets... fantastic. She lines up a shot and fires, completely missing. How bothersome. She lines up and fires another miss. The Heartless start jumping over to Sora and Riku's building. Unexpectedly, however, they all start flailing and melting when they come in contact with the cloud. Emily then realizes something when she remembers the incoming flask holder.

"Guys," Emily starts, "Get away from the building."

"What's going-" Sora starts.

"Now!" Emily exclaims. She lines up a shot to try and clip the legs of the flask holder, completely missing. Too late to make another shot, the flask holder jumps across. It chokes on the cloud as well, falling down into the building and exploding in another elaborate light and smoke show. The entire top story gets blown off, leaving behind another acidic cloud that the other Heartless still continue to jump inside. Stupid creatures. They're similar to the myth about lemmings.

"What happened?" Sora asks.

"The Heartless were coming to you," Emily starts, "But they were all dying when they hit the cloud. I saw one of those guys with the chemicals and knew what was going to happen."

"Thank you for warning us," Riku responds, "That's sort of weird, though. They usually can't find you unless you hit them without killing them."

"I accidentally hit the coat of one," Emily responds, "I'm sorry. This gun is just really bad."

"Just try your best," Riku starts, "We're only about six buildings away from the controllers. Anyway, we're going to go on ground about two buildings to the right of your view. Please tell me how many gun and chemical holders are on it."

"Okay," Emily says, moving her sight over to the building, "There are two guns and one chemical."

"Hit the guns," Riku responds, "We'll be up there in a little."

Emily takes aim at the chest of one of the gun holders, putting a bullet through its hand. Emily follows up the shot, piercing the throat for the kill. She lines up a shot at the other one, hitting the gun. A huge stream of green energy shoots out as the Heartless tries to regain control, launching several other Heartless in the air towards the bombed out building. To Emily's horror, one of them is the flask holder. As they land inside of the building, another large technicolor explosion causes the whole thing to collapse to the ground. Emily only hopes that Sora and Riku got out of range, but there's no reason to believe they didn't.

"Are you guys okay?" Emily asks.

"What happened this time?" Riku asks, sounding kind of irritated.

"I hit the gun by mistake," Emily explains, "It went wild and made the chemical guy fly away."

"Try to avoid that, please," Riku requests. Emily only wishes she could oblige him. This is starting to give her a real headache.

"Sure," Emily says, putting her sights on the next group. Only flask holders here. She moves on to the next group, finding a dozen gun holders. That would not be pretty to walk in on. She fires her first shot without really aiming, hitting one in the head. Good start. Second shot hits the floor harmlessly. At least it wasn't a gun. The third shot pierces the arm of one, causing it to fire wildly as the recoil spins it. All the other gun holders get launched off the roof before the origin's gun blows up. That works. Emily starts scanning the next group, trying to find the gun holders.

"There's my pet," the female British voice from earlier says in an affectionate tone, origin indeterminate. Emily looks around to try and find the source, getting startled as two pairs of hands grab her shoulders. As she gets pulled up and back, she looks around to reveal about half a dozen Soldiers, all of whom have chest mounted machines just like the one on the Wyvern from earlier. Emily gets an impression of what it's really doing just from how disproportionately strong these ones are compared to the simulations. Emily tries to get away, managing to free herself of the grasp for the briefest of seconds. The Soldiers all start punching at Emily, shoving past each other as they all rabidly attack. Emily tries to fight back, but the pain starts to overwhelm her senses. As she collapses to the ground, four of the Soldiers grab onto her arms and pin her facing upwards. Emily tries to get up, but the Heartless just prove too strong. As she lies there, a gun wielder walks into her field of vision. It casually tosses aside the glowing energy cannon, rolling its sleeves back as it stands menacingly over Emily. When a small cloud of darklight emitting energy gathers around its claws, Emily starts to feel panic sweeping through her.

"No!" Emily shouts, adrenaline flooding through her. With a loud yell, she pushes herself off of the ground, launching the four Soldiers backwards. As she lands on her feet, she follows through with a punch towards the lab coat bearer. A loud crack resonates through the area as the Heartless gets launched back, hitting the guard rail with a sickening crunch and dissolving into nothingness. Emily spins around to face the Soldiers, the two still standing rushing towards her. She deftly dodges to the left, grabbing the arm of the Soldier as it passes by. The other one tries to swipe at her, Emily reacting by moving the first one to block. As the claws dig in and kill the first one, Emily reaches through the dissolving black matter to grab the aggressor's wrists. She notices two nearby Soldiers starting to get back up, responding by starting to swing her current grapple around. She moves in a full circle later, smashing the two Soldiers away off of the building. Not one to waste momentum, Emily continues the the spin and releases the victim towards the other two freshly standing Heartless. They all get launched off the roof, no doubt to die down below. Emily breathes a sigh of relief at having successfully defended herself in such a tense situation. Things are surely looking up.

"Graaaagh!" shouts a bass heavy voice, startling Emily. She turns to find the grotesque giant from before, finishing its climb up the side. At least three meters tall and weighing at a ton, its only clothing covering the horribly mangled and stretched skin is a set of machinery on its waist. Vials of bubbling red liquid pump through intravenous lines all around the machine, giving off a soft glow from various blinking lights. He has a permanent grimace on his face, showing off his decaying teeth and blank white eyes. He starts a lumbering charge, giving off a guttural roar punctuated by his heavy stomps. Emily just barely gets her wits about her to dodge to the side, stumbling a little but keeping herself upright. The monstrous creature comes to a sliding stop, turning around slowly with a swagger. This doesn't look too good for Emily, but her attention falls on the sniper rifle still lying there. Not one to pass up an opportunity, she runs over to it, grabs it, aims, and fires at the giant's head.

Emily regains her composure as the giant grabs onto its head, roaring in pain. She just shot somebody in the face. That's just terrible. What excuse does she have this time? But to her greater shock, the giant looks up, pulling the slug right out of his skull. Emily starts to feel sick to her stomach when she registers the brain tissue visible in the large hole, the weirdly colored blood coagulating and scabbing over within seconds. As it roars and starts another charge, Emily tries to fire another round in its head. Unfortunately, the dreaded click alerts her to a lack of ammo just a bit too late. The giant does a forward smash into Emily, launching her backwards. She smashes very painfully into the guard rails, bending and dislodging them right off of the building. She barely manages to grab at the side of the ledge, dropping her rifle down to the street in the process. As the heavy footstomps approach her slowly, she braces herself for the inevitable death.

"Kiko, are you there?" Sora says over the communicator. The footstomps cease unexpectedly in response.

"Urh?!" the giant says, confused, as the footstomps grow fainter.

"Kiko, please respond," Sora says. After a tense couple seconds, Emily gathers some resolve and gently lifts herself up to see over the ledge. The giant is searching furiously for the source of the voice. It's truly an unbelievable sight. Does this thing even use its brain? Perhaps that's why it could take a bullet to it.

"Kiko, are you okay?" Riku asks over the communicator. Emily looks around, finding the gun of the earlier Heartless still lying there within a few paces of her position. This gives her an idea. Not a very good idea, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

"Kiko, we're coming back to you," Sora states. The giant finally figures out the source of the voice, walking over and picking up the communicator. It stares at it, rotating it around in his hands. Emily uses her catlike grace to swiftly and silently pull herself back on top of the building and grab the gun.

"Scratch that," Sora continues, "We're pinned down now. Are you safe? Please respond." The giant smashes the communicator in with his palm, giving an annoyed grunt in the process. Emily aims the bulky gun and pulls the trigger, getting no response. As the giant starts his swaggering turn in response to the loud click, Emily looks over the left side of the gun. A couple buttons labeled in the same pseudo-Japanese language are present, none of which suggest much of any function in their position, shape, or color. Emily starts pressing them, pulling the trigger in between each one. Finally, just as the giant starts to charge at her, the gun activates and streams a large green beam into her opponent. As the giant roars in pain, Emily flies backwards from the recoil and crashes right through the guard rail. The ground rapidly approaching, Emily starts to feel panic at her apparent upcoming demise. Thinking quickly, she turns around and fires the gun towards the ground. The recoil isn't enough to completely break her fall, but it slows her down just enough. She smacks face first right into the ground, a huge amount of pain shooting through her body. At least the giant is dead. He could not survive a direct hit with such a powerful weapon like that.

Suddenly, a bright flash overcomes Emily's vision. It takes her a bit by surprise, given how even she forgot that it used to give her glimpses of the pain in the future. After a few seconds, a heavy object impacts right into her back, crushing all her bones and organs. Another bright flash and Emily already knows what to do. She uses her right hand to push into the ground with all her might as she throws the gun aside with her left, rolling to the side. She sees the giant come crashing down to the ground, creating a crater in the asphalt and sending a shockwave through the area. Emily quickly gets up and grabs her gun as her opponent stands there, stunned. She quickly glances over the gun again, hoping to find some kind of way to limit its power. The gun isn't going to be useful if it's just going to send her flying with every use, after all. A glance on the other side reveals a knob with three settings. Beautiful. As the giant faces her, she puts it on the lowest setting and fires.

Spherical bolts of green energy fly out, impacting in small explosions on the giant's skin. The recoil, while not exactly pleasant, is not enough to move Emily. The giant just keeps trying to rush towards her, getting slowed down with every impact. Outside of some bruises, the energy doesn't do any damage. Just when Emily thinks she's getting the better of the giant by pushing him back, he gives a loud roar and starts charging forward without even flinching at the blasts. Emily jumps out of the path, tripping over an uneven bit of sidewalk but retaining her balance. She fires some more shots at the giant as he turns around, dodging to the side as he charges past. A couple more rounds of this futility later, another bright flash overcomes Emily's sight. The gun in her hands start arcing green electricity for a second before the whole thing explodes, splattering poor Emily across the pavement. Another bright flash and she already knows what to do.

Emily tosses the gun right at the giant, the explosion causing the giant to wail painfully. Emily watches as the giant flails about, his screech piercing the eardrums of all nearby. If the bullet hit a useless part of his body and the beam proves to be merely kinetic energy, then surely, a good old explosion should do the trick. After a while, the giant starts to regain his composure, turning to reveal half his body covered in rapidly shrinking burns. How does he keep surviving this? Weaponless, Emily makes a run for it. If that gun with all its unstable power couldn't stop this giant, what possibly could? She's only 143 pounds and can barely even lift more than her own weight. There's no way any unarmed attack is even going to budge the boulder of a man. She runs around the corner, finding about two dozen Heartless just standing around. They don't seem to notice her yet, vacantly looking up towards the sky. Well, this idea that Emily just had isn't any dumber than the gun, so why not? Going by what she remembers from the games and black binder, she holds her right hand out and tries to focus on making the Heartless follow her commands.

"Foolish girl," the female British voice calls out again, "The Heartless don't follow weak willed people. You have to actually want the Heartless to serve you."

Emily ponders about this statement for a second before yet another flash goes across her eyes. The giant grabs onto her from behind, lifting her up in a bear hug. He crushes her chest in with his embrace, another flash going by. Emily instinctively ducks down, turning around to find the giant standing over her. She slips underneath his legs, dashing back towards her point of origin. Just as she starts getting close to the building from which she fell, a large battalion of Heartless run by. They seem focused on something else, but Emily still has the giant to contend to. After dodging the pursuing opponent, Emily quickly formulates a plan. She starts running alongside the building on her left towards a fire escape, jumping off the wall and grabbing onto the edge. She swings up and starts running up the stairs as fast as she can. She might not be capable of rooftop jumping, but she's a lot faster than the giant when she wants to be and can probably trick him away if she can get out of his view. Suddenly, the fire escape tears off from the wall. Emily looks down to find the giant holding it up, walking backwards away from the building very slowly and deliberately. What is he planning?

"Stop right there!" shouts a pubescent male voice. Emily turns to see Cosmic Guardian Yami Ryuko standing in front of the tower, his long crimson hair blowing behind him in defiance to the lack of wind. Quite fortuitous timing, to be certain. As the giant makes a confused sound, Emily realizes that it is probably not a good idea to stay on the severed fire escape as he holds it. With as good a running start as she can get, Emily jumps towards a windowsill. Just barely grabbing onto it with her fingertips, she quickly climbs up and sits down on it. May as well get a good seat for the show until she can figure out an escape plan.

"How dare you?" Yami continues, pointing defiantly at his opponent, "This fine young bishoujo was walking home and you do this? You consider yourself a man, but bully and abuse an innocent young girl?! That's horrible!"

"I'm real innocent," Emily mutters under her breath, giving a soft sigh of disappointment at the boy's apparent perceptiveness. Obviously, he considers a girl wearing military fatigues stuffed full of now-useless sniper rifle magazines to be 'innocent'. The giant just continues staring agawp at the mysterious young boy while he starts striking some more poses.

"Where ever evil may crawl up from the shadows," Yami starts, exactly the same tone and stances as last time, "I will be there to banish it with the light. In the name of the Great Mother Cosmos, I will punish all evil-doers and that means you!"

"Rwaaaawrg!" shouts the giant, charging towards the boy. Yami does a very high jump over him, casually gliding down to the other end of the street. The giant does a small skid to a stop, starting his trademark swagger turn. Yami makes a couple tsk noises before casually taking two feathers out of his hairband.

"I gave you a chance to repent, ogre," Yami starts, holding the two feathers between his right thumb and index finger, "But you leave me no choice. Great Mother of the Cosmos, give me the strength to banish this foe!" The two feathers float up, taking a perpendicular shape and turning into a boomerang made of light. The giant starts running towards Yami, yelling as loud as his baritone voice will allow.

"Cosmic Boomerang... RELEASE!" Yami shouts, holding his extended palm out. The boomerang starts spinning and launches square at the giant's chest. With a sickening mixture of bones cracking and flesh searing, the boomerang embeds itself in the victim's chest. The giant grabs onto the end sticking out, trying to pull it out as he screams in pain. Yami reacts by focusing harder on his extended palm, the boomerang pushing deeper in response. As the giant falls to his knees, Yami makes an upwards sweeping motion with his hand.

"PURIFY!" he shouts. Suddenly, a pillar of light erupts around the giant, burning away at his very essence. The pillar continues upwards, reaching out of the sky beyond Emily's range of vision. The giant dissolves into a shower of sparks, filtering upwards towards the stars. After about twenty seconds of sustained light and breakdown of the giant's body, the pillar dissipates, leaving behind only the two feathers where the massive man once stood.

With the light show over, Emily turns her attention to her current situation. She might be safe on the windowsill, but the boarded up window takes away her only reliable exit. Not like going inside the building is really the safest thing to do, either, and the chaotic architecture might render her hopelessly lost. She starts looking around, trying to figure out a way to get back to street level. Quite a pressing concern, since Emily doesn't quite trust anything in this world to work properly and this windowsill might decide to randomly break down. Even further in the future, though, she has no idea how she's going to get back with Sora and Riku. This is a big city and a big army spread apart widely. However, since they said they're coming back for her, maybe it's best to just get back to the tower and wait. Quite bothersome that her uselessness is delaying the mission, but it's quite nice to know that they believe in the concept of nobody left behind. Emily's attention is distracted when Yami lands on the windowsill, casually standing at an awkward angle over the side.

"Is this seat taken?" Yami asks in a friendly tone, giving a warm smile. Emily is unsure what to do, finding the situation a bit awkward. He's a total stranger from nowhere and with an outfit like that, his sanity isn't quite 100 percent. However, it's probably not too good an idea to be unfriendly when there's no place to go.

"Not really," Emily responds, scooching over a little. Yami does a small floating leap and turns around in the air as he sits down, taking a small breath.

"Are you okay?" Yami asks with concern in his voice, looking intently at Emily, "That could have been bad if I hadn't shown up."

"I'm fine," Emily responds, not really wanting to talk about it. This is uncomfortable.

"Are you sure?" Yami asks, "I can heal you if you're hurt. My mahou allow me to protect the innocent, after all."

"I seem to be fine," Emily responds, holding her arms out as she examines them.

"If I may ask," Yami continues, making some odd but friendly looking gesture with his hands, "What brings you to this warzone? It's really dangerous here."

"I'm with some friends," Emily starts, "We're here to fight the Heartless and stuff."

"Are you here to cheer them on?" Yami asks with concern in his voice that suggests he knows the answer, continuing before Emily can answer, "I know how powerful the support of fans can be. To be out there defending the innocent against the evil-doers and have people so confident in you that they'll stand in the way of danger just to let you know how great you are is a great feeling. But this isn't just a regular weekly ogre attack. This is a war and there's no way to keep anyone safe with thousands of ogres around. They already lost you and since I don't see them anywhere, they can't be very good heroes. You should probably think of finding some new ones."

"No," Emily starts, a bit annoyed, "I'm not here to 'cheer them on'. I'm here to actually fight the Heartless with them."

"But how?" Yami asks, "You don't have any mahou in you."

"I don't," Emily starts, "But that doesn't mean I'm just some useless fangirl."

"Forgive me if I offended you," Yami responds, "I'm not used to heroes with no mahou. I can't think of how you do it. You are an interesting person and I would like to know more about you."

"Well, I can't right now," Emily responds, "I need to get back to my sniping place. They said they were going to meet me there once they got the chance."

"How do you plan to get down?" Yami asks, sounding fascinated in his discovery.

"I don't know," Emily says, looking around, "I guess I could slide down that pipe over there. Just need to jump across a couple sills."

"Let me help you," Yami responds, "The ogres here are too much for just you or me. We need to team up to survive. I can help you share in my mahou. What do you say?"

Emily sits there, thinking about the offer. She doesn't know what to make of it, really. On her own, her survival chances aren't that high. Even if she survives through the battle, this is a pretty big city in an even larger world and it's unlikely she could ever find her way back to the group. Sora and Riku might be good people, but they aren't omniscient. They'd have to get the help of the rest of the organization to find her, which would probably take days, weeks, or even months to pull together. There's no telling that Emily could possibly survive or would even be able to drink the no doubt heavily-polluted water. However, on the other end is this mysterious boy offering to share in his 'mahou', whatever that is. He doesn't seem like a native, at least. If he were a native, he'd probably be really disheveled, pushy, and insane. Even though his costume is weird and his mannerisms are odd, at least he seems nice enough. However, as pretty much every Japanese superhero story has taught her, accepting powers from strangers is a bad thing. With neither choice being too satisfactory, Emily makes a decision.

"I'll do it."


	33. Selenium Eyes

"All right!" Yami responds, making an enthusiastic gesture as he reaches behind him, "Let's begin!"

"Wait," Emily starts, stopping Yami in his tracks, "What are you going to do?"

"You don't know?" Yami asks, a bit of concern in his voice as he goes back to a more neutral position. Something about Emily finding his ways arcane strikes him as odd.

"I don't," Emily responds, "I'm not from your world. Remember?"

"It's easy," Yami explains, "I'll cast a spell on you and give you a few spells. It will last for about an hour. Are you ready?"

"I'm ready," Emily says, faking her best smile. No time like the present, after all. She needs something extra if she wants to stand any sort of chance at making a difference and this boy seems to be good to his word. Why else would he dress up in something like this and say such goofy things? It would be counterproductive in either direction of villainy. Yami nods, pulling three feathers out of a band and sticking them above Emily's bangs. He places his hand on her forehead, his fingers curved in a small cup shape.

"Cosmic Transfer!" Yami exclaims, flattening his palm with a very small bit of force. Emily gets this overwhelming feeling of lucidity, feeling light and sensitive all over. Such pure bliss. She has no clue what's going on, but this is the pinnacle of feelings, the summit of the mountain. Oh, how glorious life is. If only everything could be as great as this experience. This is like every Christmas multiplied by every birthday, taken to the power of the first time she saw Riku in her twenty playthroughs of the last chapter of Kingdom Hearts II. This surely can't compare to the bliss that she'd find in his arms, though. So firm, so supple, so perfect in form and essence. He does all the right things at all the right times and is just such a perfect match for Emily. Just when Emily was really starting to get into it, the feeling rushes out all at once. She still has a heightened awareness of herself and can feel something buzzing at the back of her mind. Nothing so great lasts too long, apparently.

"Are you ready, er... I forgot to ask your name, didn't I?" Yami asks, sounding quite embarrassed. He makes this gesture that almost seems like he wishes he wasn't visible.

"It's Kiko," Emily responds.

"Well, then, Bishoujo Kiko," Yami says, smiling widely as he loosens up again, "Are we ready?"

"Wait," Emily says, "What do I do?" Yami just holds a finger to his mouth, looking intently at Emily. She figures out that she just has to wait for an inspiration or something. She never really noticed it, but his eyes are actually a dark red instead of the brown she initially thought. They have this sort of weird glass look to them, flat shades in perfect circles. They almost seem artificial. Suddenly, Emily gets an inspiration. Something at the fringe of her mind gives her an idea of what she can do if she just trusts her instincts. She gives in to the subconscious desire, holding her hand out and focusing on it. She gets some feeling of lightness, but nothing immediately obvious happens.

"You're getting the hang of it," Yami says in an encouraging and enthusiastic tone, pushing himself off the windowsill and floating towards the ground. How useful of him. Emily sighs and pushes herself up on the windowsill. So much for Yami's solution. She'll just have to get down on her own. She makes a dashing jump to the next sill over, grabbing onto it with her hands. She swings herself up, making another running jump. Two more repeats and she finds herself about ten meters away from pipe. A bit worrying, but whatever. She does another dashing jump, her leap arcing down about a story before she just barely slams into the pipe. She awkwardly grabs on loosely, getting some friction burn as she slides down six stories. As she hits a notch, the pain causes her to let go and fall down another story. She smacks into the ground rear first, her back hitting a split second later. As she lies there and tries to will away the pain, Yami walks over her.

"Are you okay?" he asks, holding his hand out to her.

"I'm peachy," Emily snaps, getting up on her own, "Why did you leave me behind like that?"

"You cast Light Freedom," Yami explains, sounding apologetic, "I thought you knew what you were doing. I'm sorry, I should have explained. Please forgive me." With the last sentence, he bows his head down and places his hands flat against each other in front. Emily stands there for a bit, uncomfortable with this awkward gesture.

"It's fine," Emily says, waiting a few seconds before inevitably continuing, "You can stand up now."

"Thank you," Yami says, resuming his stance, "Do you need me to heal you?"

"I should be fine in a little," Emily responds, doing some stretches, "I don't get hurt easily. So, um... how does this work?"

"Just jump where you want," Yami says, encouragingly, "It's easy."

"Okay," Emily responds, deciding to give it a shot. She focuses around the area where she fell earlier. Her sniper rifle should be somewhere around there still. So, this is probably some zen stuff she has to do in order to tap into this power. Believe that she is the one or some lame crap. With a sigh, she does a running jump. Much to her surprise, she speeds up about five times, landing exactly where she intended. That works. A quick check of the area reveals her gun to be lying on a nearby urban stoop. Even though it's only five paces away and she could just walk over to it, she decides to do a floating back flip jump by it, scooping it up as she passes by. But there is still the ultimate test. Emily looks to the top of the building, focusing on jumping up to it. With an effortless leap, she flies all the way up and lands right where desired. Still another test to go. With total faith in her abilities, Emily dives towards the ground. With one foot extended, she lands with a certain grace on her toes.

Emily finds this fun beyond belief. Such freedom of motion and lack of restraint means that she can do literally anything. Hop from building to building, fall any distance, bounce everywhere. She can travel great distances, scale any obstacle, and it doesn't even tire her out whatsoever. So much more like the video games she loves. No more of these broken legs from fifteen meter falls. Now, the world is her playground. She wants to fly through the skies, skip across the ocean, and do all the things that she never could with such a flimsy body. No longer will she have bullies smack her with car doors or shove her down stairs or gang up on her during the age inappropriate dodgeball sessions her old school used to hold. Maybe that lying seraph started her out on the wrong foot, but there's nothing holding her back now.

"Kiko?" Yami asks, gettng her attention. There's a sense of both concern and also a feeling that this isn't an unusual event for him to witness.

"I feel great!" Emily responds, genuinely feeling it, "What other spells did you give me?"

"Just Light Freedom," Yami answers, an expectation of backlash in his voice.

"Wait," Emily starts, feeling a bit indignant at this revelation, "You offer to protect me with your powers, but you only give me one measly spell?"

"It's your first time," Yami starts, "And the mahou hito way doesn't allow me to give you more than you need."

"That's lame," Emily says, deflated. She was going to complain some more, but she has gotten just a tad better about this. It's not in her place to question the guy that just opened up the freedom to move so effortlessly.

"Where do you think your friends are?" Yami asks.

"Oh," Emily says, realizing that she forgot all about her mission for a minute, "They're on a roof somewhere. It shouldn't be hard to find them."

"Let's find them," Yami offers, "Stay with me and I'll keep you safe from danger and the dangerous Heartless."

"Okay..." Emily says, thinking back to what he said and did earlier. She then realizes something. After a quick check reveals a reflective window not too far away, Emily jumps towards it.

"Wait, where are you going?" Yami asks, a bit surprised by the sudden action. Emily looks at herself in the window, shocked to find her eyes have been changed to a dark shade of red. Doing what any calm, rational person would do in such a minor situation, she panics.

"What did you do to my eyes?!" Emily shouts towards Yami as he floats over.

"It comes from the mahou," Yami responds, "It will go away when the spell wears off."

"I can't be seen like this," Emily starts, turning to face Yami, "Change them back."

"I can't," Yami responds, "I'm sorry."

"What do you mean you... nevermind," Emily says, regaining her composure. If he can't do anything, she'll just have to make do. Emily wishes she still had her sunglasses she came in with, but they probably got lost when she was attacked the first time. Not much she can really do about it. Suddenly, she gets an idea. She jumps back towards her original sniping position, striding along the building. Right where she killed the lab coat Heartless is the pair of goggles. Emily carefully picks them up with the end of her rifle, turning towards Yami as he lands beside her.

"Can you purify these or something?" Emily asks, holding the gun horizontally by him. He demonstrates either a cluelessness about gun safety or a suicidal trust in Emily by stepping right in front of the barrel, sliding the goggles off and dangling them in the air. He lets go, allowing them to float as he waves his hands around them. A soft white glow flows from his hands through them, ceasing after a few seconds when he plucks them back out of the air. During this, Emily takes the chance to reload the gun, slinging it onto her back afterwards.

"Here you go," Yami starts as he hands over the goggles, "There wasn't anything to clean, but I did it. What are you doing?"

"I need to hide my eyes," Emily starts, looking over the goggles, "I don't want them to think I'm contaminated or something." Emily slides the goggles on, her vision gaining an orange tint. At the expense of color differentiation, everything seems to be in a sharper focus with less glare. Brings to mind the question of what type of vision the Heartless have, but it could just be style for all she knows. At least they don't impair her vision.

"Don't you trust me?" Yami asks, sounding concerned rather than annoyed. His face suggests that he's hurt by Emily's statement.

"I do," Emily lies, adjusting the goggles a little, "But I don't know if my friends do. Anyway, give me a minute."

"Anything you say," Yami responds, doing a polite semi-bow. Emily grabs the scope of the gun, unlatching it and walking over to the edge. She looks through the scope, checking around the area. The rooftops, once bristling with Heartless, are now mostly empty. It doesn't take long before she finds all of the Heartless converging towards a single large rooftop for what appears to be a massive parking garage. Sora and Riku are fighting for dear life, mowing through wave after wave of Heartless while dodging green laser beams, lobbed test tubes, and cars getting blown up. The robot from earlier is waiting patiently in the distance, gauging the battle as it unfolds. Emily isn't quite sure of why it's just standing there. Maybe Sora or Riku hit it with Stop?

"I see them," Emily starts, effortlessly reaching back to snap the scope in place.

"It's ti-" Yami starts.

"Here's my plan," Emily interrupts, "I can't fight so close with just this gun and I want Sora and Riku to meet you first before they find out we're together. Join them and pretend we haven't met. I'll be two buildings over and will come to you in a little."

"I don't know what you're trying to do," Yami says, shrugging his shoulders, "But if it will help, I'll do it!"

"Okay," Emily says, walking over to the ledge, "Let's go."


	34. Shocker

Emily and Yami bounce across the rooftops, the former stopping just where she claimed as the latter continues his arcing jump down towards the fray. Two rooftops should be a good balance between accurate range while staying away from detection. Sora and Riku are still holding out, although they look like they could use a breather. To Emily's surprise, their clothing reflects actual damage. Maybe she's just too used to the games, but to see those iconic outfits drenched in sweat and blood with frayed edges and gashes just looks flat out wrong. They both glance briefly at Yami as he zips in, turning their attention back to the Heartless. They must remember him from earlier, probably also deducing that someone so unashamed about his appearance and mannerisms must be on the side of good. Either that or they are just going to keep an eye on him and are confident enough that they can defeat him easily should he prove to not be on their side. Either way, at least it works towards the plan. Emily takes up a position by a guard rail, setting up her sniper rifle and orienting herself to the situation.

The parking garage is about one story lower and 200 meters away at a minimum, stretching another 200 meters away from Emily. This is just the narrow end, with a width of about 400 meters. There is a relatively small barrier around the perimeter and an erratic arrangement of cars, most of which have been long since deconstructed for pieces and left behind as shells of useless parts. The odds of actually being able to drive any of these is about as high as as becoming a millionaire through investing in a homeless person's advice in the stock market. They provide some minor cover, but that's about the extent of their usefulness. There are some collapsed sections in the floor, their edges suggesting acidic melting instead of natural causes. Probably a result of all the chemical Heartless running around and tossing their test tubes with wild abandon. There is a ramp at the far end towards the left, droves of Heartless running up the incline towards Sora and Riku. The groups have the familiar faces, with Shadows, Soldiers, and the two lab coat types making up their bulk. Also among them are these large Heartless in purple plate armor. They carry huge shields with sentient beast heads protruding from them, their glowing yellow eyes positively disturbing. Emily recognizes them from the games but doesn't remember what these are called. They seem threatening, though, and are definitely worth shooting lest they do any damage to Riku's perfect body.

With a quick glance, Emily finds one closing in on her friends. This will make a good first target and should also allow them to know that she's back in action. As it raises its shield, Emily fires a round into its head. As black liquid oozes out of the hole in the helmet, it staggers around wildly before losing its balance. Crashing into the ground with a loud clamber, the armor brittlely breaks into hundreds of small pieces as the entire creature dissolves into nothingness. That works. Emily lines up another shot, firing at the head of another armored hulk. The bullet grazes the side of the helmet, doing minimal damage. That won't do. Emily quickly realigns her shot and fires, completely missing this time. The armored hulk starts wandering towards her general direction, both heads looking around slowly and introspectively. Emily takes another shot, hitting nothing but air. Another hurried shot has no effect, either. Just as Emily was about to fire another shot, she notices the armored hulk block an attack from Sora. The head on the shield gives a barely audible roar considering the distance, streaming a line of fire out of its mouth. Sora casually dodges to the side as a car shell ignites, rolling on the ground and emerging on his feet with his keyblade at the ready. As the armored hulk turns to face Sora, Riku dashes behind it and does a vertical slice upwards while leaping. The Heartless cracks and dissolves into nothingness as Riku lands where it once stood. So graceful, so strong, so perfect.

Emily takes a breather, remembering back to her training. She was always told to relax, not firing too hastily lest she start making dumb mistakes and overcompensating. After some deep breathing, she goes back to the rifle. There are three armored hulks closing in on Sora and Riku, marching side by side with shields raised. Emily first aims at the middle one, shooting its head without too much difficulty. Forcing herself to wait for a beat, she realigns the sight and takes out the next one. Taking another deep breath, she aligns the shot and takes a chunk out of its head just as it was about to attack her friends. They focus their attention on some more lesser Heartless, freeing Emily up a little. She's starting to get the hang of this. Just need to calm down between each shot and it should work out fine.

And so, Emily keeps firing shot after shot towards the enemies. While she is doing a good job of keeping the area clear of the shield wielders, it's starting to feel hopeless with the emergence of wave after wave of Heartless. Whatever pretense of attacking the city there once was seems to have dissolved in favor of attacking Sora and Riku with as much conviction as possible. They must draw quite a bit of animosity, with the Heartless completely ignoring even Yami to attack them. Not like Yami is having much effect, his telepathic boomerang easily evaded or blocked by anything higher than the Shadows. It's sort of worrisome that he doesn't seem to have any attacks besides this one. The robot is still just standing there, not moving at all. Emily long since figured out that it probably got fried by a lightning attack or something. In fact, that's probably what happened. With so many enemies, they probably just picked the robot off from a distance so they wouldn't have to find out what unpleasant attacks it has. Just as Emily finishes reloading another clip, she gets a minor startle from a voice behind her.

"So, you're the mercenary that Mint got for us?" a male voice asks, sounding curious yet partially hostile. It doesn't take long for Emily to recognize it as Dukakis. However, she can't gauge what else might be behind her and it's not like she has a good multi-target weapon. If there's more than one person, she'd probably get killed before any second shot could be made. Not wanting to take the risk, Emily props her rifle against the guard rail and turns around. She tries to give off a feeling of confidence, as though she expected him to show up. It was a good idea, considering that the cyborg is standing by Dukakis. At this proximity, Emily gets a better overview of the hybrid of machinery and sub-humanity. He's wearing some kind of nearly black shade of purple cape with large shoulder pads, merging seamlessly with his black leather skin tight one piece uniform. Outside of his left hand and face, the only parts not covered by the leather are huge segments of brass machinery integrated in a truly painful looking manner. They seem like they're sewed right into the muscle and tissue, with little regard for cleanliness. At some of the seams, there seems to be some stains of a dark purple. No doubt somewhere on his back is another of the intravenous machines. A truly fearsome sight, to be certain.

"Yeah, that slut Mint hired me," Emily says in an exaggeratedly dark tone while giving a squinty sadistic smile. It pains her to do something so against her personality, but an imitation of the hostile insanity she has noticed in the locals is the best course of action. Dukakis rolls his eyes at her.

"Whatever, Dead Widow," Dukakis starts, looking more irritated at Emily for being cliche than for any other reason, "We have a situation."

"Yes, you do," Emily says, turning back to her sniper rifle, "Those runts are still alive. Let me fix that."

"Leave them alone," Dukakis orders with a certain amount of aplomb, "They're not our target any more."

"What do you mean they're not our target?!" Emily hams up as she starts lining up a target close to but obviously not Sora, "They're killing our troops! Of course they must die!"

"They're not our troops any more," Dukakis says, stepping beside her, "Mint left us. She released Eurytos and turned the Heartless against anything and everything that isn't black and dreary."

"What the hell is that?" Emily asks, propping the rifle back and turning to the balding man.

"It's the culmination of our Heartless research," Dukakis explains, sounding like somebody who shouldn't have to explain this, "What, did you think we were making thermometers with all that mercury we had you steal? Think, dummy."

"Are you threatening me?" Emily asks, glaring daggers at Dukakis. With a code name like 'Dead Widow' to live up to, she needs to maintain some appearance to justify it. Just casually accepting everything would break the charade pretty quickly.

"No, I'm not threatening you," Dukakis starts in a condescending tone, "Calm down, you paranoid ham. Remember that I'm paying you a lot of palladium, so at least pretend like I'm a confident or something."

"What do you want?" Emily snaps. That should make her asking the question look believable.

"We're going to kill Eurytos," Dukakis continues, "With extreme prejudice and a lot of property damage, preferably. Lots of mayhem and bloodshed just the way you like it, you sadistic witch. Mondale here will assist you."

"Does this look like a giant Heartless killing gun?" Emily asks, picking up the rifle and holding it in front of Dukakis.

"Why, yes, it does," Dukakis responds, "What, lost your nerve already? Goddamn little git. Happy to kill from a distance, but you wet your panties at the first thought of having to actually close in on it. What kind of pathetic assassin are you?"

"How dare you?!" Emily shouts, "I could kill you right where you stand!"

"You won't," Dukakis flatly states, "I have immunity and Mondale would kill you before your pathetic kinetic weapon could re-chamber itself. You know this. I know this. Mondale may or may not know this. Regardless, don't try something like that unless you've decided that life is just too hard to keep going. Just come with me."

"Fine!" Emily says, closing her eyes and looking away as she gives a stern face. What she lacks in believability, she certainly makes up in overacting. At least Dukakis seems to be falling for it.

"Just come with me," Dukakis repeats, pressing some keys on a device and turning some dial. Emily looks back with a dour look in time to see a three part hover board float up over the guard rail and land right by them. The machine has the same sort of patchwork quality to it as a lot of other things in this world, with each section marked by an illuminated circle. Seems safe enough, at least. Dukakis takes the center position as Mondale takes the part on his right. Emily gives an exaggerated sigh, slinging the rifle behind her and stepping on the board. Emily gets a minor shock as the board levitates off the ground, flying really fast towards the inner part of the city. Emily almost feels herself get flung off, but something on the board keeps her feet planted. She regains her composure and starts ducking a little to reduce the wind resistance, almost appearing like some type of surfer. She hopes that this isn't too out of character from the so-called 'Dead Widow' that she's borrowing the identity of. At least they haven't even suggested they don't believe her.

"Eurytos isn't that far from the marketplace," Dukakis explains, controlling the board through some crude remote control and its creaky joysticks, "Mint was right. The Heartless were perfect for this. They didn't just dispatch the Diesel Bots, they infected them and took them over. They even shoot infected shells, converting the targets into more Heartless. It's beautiful. But we can't control them any more and they're starting to destroy everything they see. I was worried that this would happen, but it was worth it."

"You mean your experiment is backfiring on you?" Emily asks, oozing cynicism, "I totally didn't see that coming."

"Oh, kindly shut up," Dukakis responds, irritated, "The experiment worked. The Heartless took over Safehome Thirty Three just as planned. Now, we just need to take it away from them. They're dumb as bricks, so that shouldn't be hard at all."

Emily catches a glance at city hall, on fire with a man impaled on the nearby flag pole. Poor Flint. His clone is probably pissed now. There are a couple giant robots with a black liquid swarming all over them, green radiation glow shining through the thin patches. These are no doubt the infected Diesel Bots. They don't seem to have any real purpose at the moment, just sort of hanging out. Dukakis continues flying, revealing the razed marketplace. A couple infected Diesel Bots are wandering around with the same listlessness, but the real centerpiece is a 40 meter tall Heartless. Its proportions make it look vaguely like an oil drum, the cylindrical shape of its torso broken only by its arms. Its head reminds Emily a little of Darkside, with a stony face and glowing yellow eyes. Covering the black mass of Heartless is a whole swathe of machines, injecting liquids of all kinds of colors into the huge abomination. It looks like it could bench press a building with its stocky physique. In spite of its menacing appearance, it doesn't seem to really care what's going on. Almost looks satisfied with itself.

"Go forth, Mondale!" Dukakis commands. Mondale jumps off of the hover-board, electricity arcing around him and forming a semi-visible sphere as he falls. A hundred meters later, he lands effortlessly in the middle of the open area. The electricity keeps arcing around him as the infected Diesel Bots all turn to face him, a sudden flash and crack leaving a blur heading straight towards one of the robots. It takes Emily a second to register Mondale tearing right through the infected Diesel Bot with lightning speed and electrically charged fists. She has to believe he's been there the whole time, but he still didn't become actually visible for longer than he should have. There's another crack and flash just as the other robots unload a barrage into Mondale's former location, its trail heading towards one of the others. As the infected Diesel Bot explodes from all the shells inadvertently unloaded into it, Mondale reappears the robot the path leads to a bit later than something as fast as lightning realistically should. Dukakis and Emily continue floating around, circling above the battlefield and watching the chaos unfold.

"So... what did you need me to do?" Emily asks, changing tone after the first few words when she realized she was out of character. At least inconsistency is a trait of the locals. Otherwise, that would have looked bad.

"Oh, you have a very special job," Dukakis says, chuckling. That's not a good sign. Not a good sign at all.

"What?" Emily asks, very rudely.

"You're the decoy," Dukakis states.

"Wha-" Emily starts.

"You don't think I ever actually thought you worked for us, did you?" Dukakis asks. Emily reaches for her gun, but Dukakis shoves her off of the hover-board with ease. "Idiot," he calls out.

Emily falls straight towards Eurytos, too shocked to attempt to change her path. The giant Heartless looks up, swiping and grabbing her with ease. She was going to try to adjust her path, but the thing was just simply too fast. Its hand covers up Emily's body up to her neck, restricting all movement. Eurytos holds Emily right in front of its face, examining her as she struggles to break free. It seems to find something curious about her, not treating her as prey. As Emily stares at the dead eyes of the Heartless, she starts to feel really panicky and cagey. Something is gnawing at the back of her mind, telling her that she is at the end of her lifespan and should go to sleep. She starts getting visions from her life, focusing on her happy moments. The Playstation, her first RPG with Final Fantasy IX, the day she met Jamie, the birthday that netted a Playstation II, the first Kingdom Hearts, playing Hollow Bastion for the first time, the second Kingdom Hearts, the first time she saw the ultra-sexy version of Riku... Riku. She can't die yet. Riku needs her. Who is qualified to take care of him? Nobody. Will he be happy if she dies? No. She still has a purpose and hell if she's going to let some overgrown ink blot stop her. Emily starts to feel the buzzing at the back of her mind grow more potent as her panic grows to a crescendo.

"Let me gooooooooo!" Emily screams, sustaining the last syllable as a bright flash consumes the area.


	35. Double Your Pleasure

Mr. Selacia is back in his office after a long day of tedious instruction. It's certainly one of the great pleasures in life to just relax after a long day. He flops into the nice chair and puts his feet on his desk, stretching to get the cricks out of his back. Usually, he'd just browse on the internet auction sites for some more historical memorabilia, but today is different. It's the first day since the students have returned, allowing the now finished text message interceptor to be 'legally' employed. No need to grade papers today. A quick hook-up to the computer downloads all the data, opening a folder with everything stored in separate files. A casual glance at Dana Billett's log becomes boring pretty fast.

hey when r u going 2 give bck my t? i need it 4 teh weekend.

Selacia rolls his eyes and drags the file to the waste bin.

jack lookd at me in chem 2day! im so happy! :D

Deleted.

is jenny free? i wan 2 to ask her onn a d8

Deleted.

You could be a winner! Just text 01821 for your chance at a new car today!

Deleted. And the other 20 copies. Miss Billett sure doesn't have any judgment in signing up for things.

i herd rumors ui hurt jamie?

This looks promising. Almost too good to be true so soon. It was worth it to get Jason Vance to spread underground rumors about the incident.

i did. it felt good to watch her struggle. dont tell anyone.

"Why, hello ," Selacia says, his voice getting distorted as the area around him starts melting. The vision shifts towards a blurry white room of some kind, hurried sounds of desperate people surrounding it. Quite disorienting.

"Hurry, get em-kee-gii," somebody shouts. Emily feels disconnected, what little sensory information she has overwhelmed by a burning sensation all over. She feels her chest contract, the pressure sending her brain into a panic.

"She's phasing it's even worded in a mean-spirited way," Selacia explains. Emily's vision dissolves back to the office, where Selacia and Jason are talking over a bowl of confisca.

"You're confident this is admissable in court?" Jason asks, "Sounds kind of sparse the way you described it."

"Not really," Selacia admits, "You're right. This is too sparse to really link it to her. There's also the angle that she wasn't the one to write it. It's sort of vague and doesn't really correlate with her writings. That's where you come in. You need to bug her every chance you get. Ask for interviews, bug her with shooting pictures, interrupt her conversations. Just be a dick in a subtle fashion. I'll help by picking on her in class, so she should be agitated by lunch. We need her to say or do something that establishes her character."

"This goes against journalistic ethics," Jason responds.

"This isn't about journalism, Mr. Vance," Selacia continues, "This is about justice... or at least some vague approximation of it, anyway. You're still getting a story, one that will probably take you far."

"Why would I have sudden interest in her, anyway?" Jason asks. Selacia ponders this for a moment before answering.

"I have an idea," Selacia says, picking up the phone and dialing a four digit extension, "Hello, Mrs. Blundell? Yeah, it's Mike... no, I'm not available tonight... well, you know how you always tell me you owe a favor for the Morrison Grant? I have something... yeah, I finally have something... you know how you've been milling over the vacancy of head cheerleader? I want you to appoint Dana Billett in the role... yes, I do hate her, but that's why I want her to get the position... also, tell her I asked for this and don't give her any guidance whatsoever... yes, I'm serious about all this... thank you. I'll see you tomorrow at lunch." Selacia drops the phone onto the receiver casually.

"What was thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa..." Jason says, his voice distorting as the room starts melting back to the white room.

"She back," somebody says.

"Stay with us, Kiko," some male voice says as some minor feeling of pressure comes from her right hand. Emily is still unsure of what's going on, trying to orient herself by hearing and touch alone. She knows she's lying down, probably on a stretcher. That much is a relief, at least. Judging by how Dukakis tried to kill her, she can't be in enemy hands. They'd have no reason to keep her alive. The competence level means that she's probably back with her friends instead of in the hands of the locals. That's good to know.

"Are you feeling good, Kiko?" somebody asks. The voice sounds familiar, but the high pitched whine in her ears is masking it.

"Kiko, if you're there, please respond," the first male voice asks. Emily tries to respond, but she's limp all over. Her lips won't move, her breathing isn't in her control, and she can't even feel below her waist. She tries to focus on making some kind of sound, attempting to remaster control of her lungs. It takes an agonizing twenty seconds, but she eventually gives off a soft whimper that sounds like a small animal of some kind.

"She's back," the male voice starts, "Get ready. Kiko, whatever you do, don't fall asleep. Focus on something." Emily is unsure of what she should do. Does it mean to find something in her vision to cue in on? Maybe a sound in the background? She doesn't get a chance to contemplate it too far.

"Clear!" somebody shouts, with a loud thud. Emily gets the feeling of a dozen knives stabbing all over, feeling herself strain from the back rending spasm. The pressure from the contorting muscle makes her feel like her blood is going to burst right out of her skin. Suddenly, she feels like she is falling, the weight of her eyes recessing into her skull. With a sharp snap, her vision comes back into focus. Her feeling of disconnection suddenly vanishes as well, the high pitched tone going along with it. From dying to perfect health in an instant. The confusion is overwhelming.

"Are you feeling okay?" some voice asks.

"What happened?" Emily retorts brainlessly. It takes her a second before she realizes that she can move again if she's able to talk. She gets up quickly, looking around the white room that was once obscured beyond recognition. It appears to be the medical room back at Ansem's castle. How did she get all the way over here? It took at least a couple hours to get to the planet. Dr. Whatshisname is here, along with Riku and Chou. Riku seems passively interested in this, but doesn't seem to care that much. Maybe he's just relaxed now that Kiko is okay? Chou looks like she's almost about to cry... in other words, completely normal.

"I'm so happy you're okay!" Chou says exhuberantly, rushing in to an embrace with Emily.

"Um... that's okay," Emily says, a bit perturbed by this. Did Chou completely forget about personal space or something?

"I was so worried," Chou blurts out, crying profusely, "You looked like you were going to die and the doctor wouldn't let me cure you. I was so scared!"

"Well, I'm okay now," Emily starts, patting Chou on her back, "I think. I hope."

"I hate to think of what I'd do without you," Chou says amidst her sobs soaking Emily's shoulder. The scratchy feeling of the pressure reminds Emily that she is probably wearing something else. A quick glance reveals that she's in some type of hospital gown, Riku's loaned military outfit cut up on a nearby table. It's barely even recognizable with all the burn marks and holes.

"What happened?" Emily asks towards Riku. It's starting to creep her out just a little.

"You got magic contaminated," the doctor responds, "Could not use magic. Brains almost fry. Had to bring back with medicine." So much for Riku explaining anything. Have to go with Dr. Incomprehensible.

"What does that mean?" Emily asks to Riku, not even glancing at the doctor.

"There was some big white explosion," Riku explains, pulling a large glossy picture from his jacket and handing it to Emily, "Here's what it looked like when we found you."

"I see," Emily responds, looking at the picture as Chou continues her sobbing embrace. The picture shows a huge crater with her in the center of it, battered, burned, and sprawled in a contorted position. Outside of the perimeter of the crater is the wreckage of a bunch of Diesel Bots, oozing some bright green liquid from their cracked and blackened shells. Besides some burning ruins of the city, there isn't much else to look at.

"Oh," Riku says, pulling out a brass brooch with a blue gem from a pocket, "Professor Uina wanted me to give this back to you. He said it has something to do with preventing you from phase shifting."

"That's what it does?" Emily asks as she takes it, pretending to be surprised. It's a good thing Uina is their resident tech expert. This could have been messy if somebody with a little less corruption had looked it over.

"Yeah," Riku says, "I'm really glad that you're okay. I was worried about you when you stopped responding. I thought you were dead."

"Chou," Kiko starts, thinking carefully about her phrasing, "I know you're really concerned about me or something, but it would really help if you could give me some space."

"I'm sorry," Chou says, breaking away. She's back in that fuchsia dress, apparently fixed of its damage. So much for practicality. It would be nice if this is rebellion against Sergeant Williams, but that's pretty unlikely with her doormat personality.

"I have so much to tell you," Kiko says, turning to the doctor, "But first: am I on some medication or something? I'm just feeling kind of, I don't know... like I'm a robot or something. No feelings."

"We need keep under observation, Keekoo," the doctor starts, making a shooing motion towards Riku and Chou, "Friends will have go."

"But I want to see them," Kiko protests in a completely flat way. She hadn't even really noticed that she's speaking in some type of creepy monotone.

"Sorry but no," the doctor says, "Please get sleep."

"But I want to-" Kiko starts.

"He's right," Riku interrupts, "You just got severe magic contamination. You're lucky to even be alive right now. You need rest."

"Well... okay," Kiko concedes.

"Need help sleep?" the doctor asks as he grabs a cup off of the counter. He must have planned ahead for this.

"Yeah, sure," Kiko responds. She really isn't in any position to argue over this. Maybe it's just the medicine driving her, but it just seems like she should do whatever the doctor asks of her.

"Here, drink," the doctor says, handing the cup to her. The thick brown liquid smells of some type of cleaning solution, the stuff you'd smell in a low rent office building. It takes a little for Emily to force herself to drink, putting the cup to her lips and downing it all at once. The taste of something vaguely similar to stale milk is the last sensation as Emily's consciousness fades out.

In the depths of some alien realm, there exists a persistant blackness punctuated by occasional wells of ultraviolet light. The inky darkness takes on forms of a type of liquid, with cascades, tidal waves, and cyclones manifesting all around. It all seems to float without any surface to support it, their placement and directions completely devoid of logic or reason. Everything with a discernable color has a sinister shade of near-black purple to it, radiating off and through endless amounts of the black liquid. There is no way to tell which way is up or if there even is any gravity in this realm. Attempting to map the realm would be futile, driving one insane in any attempt to locate a reliable marker. One spot of hope remains, however. In the deepest recesses are the ruins of a grey castle. Its main structure long since compromised, the remains consist of the floating spires and debris. A strange type of spherical object is in the center of the ruins, radiating a bright white light. Smaller spheres at random points are linked by white lasers to the center, the whole arrangement giving off a soft radiance that repels away all the inky blackness.

At one corner of this warded area is a cluster of spires unlike the others. Whereas the others are battered and broken down to unusability, this set of four still stands strong. They are banded together, with a lot of marble slates keeping it all together. Within its convergent point is an overwhelming amount of white light, almost an inversion of the outside area. Floating in the center is an external structure made out of onyx, with the occasional patch of azurite. The whole thing appears to be a disc of about 100 meters from end to end, with a circular layout. In the center is a small fountain pouring some type of glowing aquamarine liquid through the grooves in the floor, many making up some ancient runic language. There are a couple raised sections, with gnarled black trees made of some alien material bearing atypical purple fruit. Two large archways stand opposite of each other, each with a circular pool of the aquamarine liquid covered by a clear crystaline substance. Everything on this makeshift island glows, most of it the color of the liquid. Standing by the fountain is a tall female figure with a black frayed cloak, horns on her head and a staff in her hands. Her sickly skin and yellow eyes mark her as something most definitely not human.

"Come forth, my apprentice," the cloaked woman commands, holding her staff towards an archway. The aquamarine liquid starts to course through the structure, the water cascading over the arch from above. With a sudden snap of wind, a black cloud of smoke comes billowing through it. The smoke dissipates into the liquid just as quickly as it came, leaving behind a blonde haired woman of about 5'5". She's a little bit on the heavy side, her lab coat just barely obscuring this fact. She has a dour expression on her face, looking a combination of impatient and angry.

"About friggin' time," the woman says, haughtiness pervading her voice, "Can I get out of this crappy disguise?"

"Yes, you may," the cloaked woman responds. Miss Haughty holds a clenched fist in front of her closed eyes for a few seconds, quickly grabbing an end of the labcoat and whipping it off in a blur. Her form changes from that of a pudgy woman to a muscular one, her clothes shifting as well. They settle on a motif of dark greens with a deep sea tint, with the occasional lining of greenish white to accent the colors. Her two piece top appears to be some sort of heavily modified dress jacket over skin-tight vinyl, covering her forearms and upper chest while leaving her shoulders, hands, and midriff bare. Her jacket is made of some thick mesh, unbuttoned in front with no sleeves and a bunch of randomly placed pockets. Below is a frilly deep green miniskirt made of vinyl with a satin outer edge, overlapping a pair of tight biker shorts. Her flat leather combat boots go up to just under her knees, adorned with four ovular chrysoprase arranged vertically and facing outwards on the sides. Her hair, still blonde, is now in a two tail braid that goes down to her mid-back. Along with a dark green metallic band on her left thigh, a chryosoprase bracelet on her right wrist, and a strange dark spot in the shape of a shell just under her neck, she looks rather odd.

"What was the point of all that?" the green woman asks, sounding impatient. As she says this, she makes an exaggerated expression with her arms.

"I needed you to investigate that world for me," black cloak woman starts, "Did you not learn anything from your internship?"

"Oh, please," the green woman retorts, "Dukakis was a moron. All my skills and he just wanted me to be his errand girl. 'Oh, go get me some more mercury, Mint. Go steal some more platinum, Mint. Go tell Kitty I won't be home for dinner tonight, Mint.' It was so... argh! I hated it! And the constant hitting on me was driving me insane! He's a friggin' old guy! What chance does he have with a young beauty like me?"

"But his plan came together," black cloak woman responds, "Just as I planned, he made a new breed of Heartless, one that can go toe to toe with Sora and Riku. He made a newborn leader Heartless into something terrifying. And he did all this without being consumed by that which he wrought."

"But they didn't do squat, Mistress," the woman nicknamed Mint continues, "Sora and Riku just mowed through them like grass. That 'terrifying' leader Heartless? It got destroyed by some big energy explosion. I couldn't even sense any trace of it when it disappeared. The whole thing was a damn waste of a month and you know it."

"My dear apprentice," the mistress starts, walking slowly towards her, "I've done my best to teach you that there is no such thing as truly 'winning' or 'losing'. The only true victory or defeat is in non-existence. By that point, you don't have the power to make any judgment and so, you cannot do anything to change the world. No, there is only progress and setbacks. The setback of this was, of course, the failure of Dukakis, his goons, and the Heartless to defeat Sora and Riku. Unfortunate, but expected. They are the heroes of prophecy, after all, even if their prophecy is over and they should be just as vulnerable as any other mortal. They also had some assistance from outside, but it wasn't enough to make much of a difference. The boy with the feathers almost made me laugh when I saw him. But just because the two meddlesome kids could take on some of the weaker Heartless doesn't mean we should give up on this plan. Even if the plan to defeat those self-proclaimed 'heroes' failed, it still produced a better Heartless for us to try again. That world wasn't supplying the best pedigrees for our Heartless, with nearly everybody being a copy of a copy. Endless generations of copies resulting in brittle, unusable hearts. All we need is for Dukakis to-"

"Dukakis is dead," Mint interrupts.

"Now, now," the mistress starts, standing by Mint, "Just because he lost some more of his sanity doesn't mean he can't be a good scientist. I don't know much about science or technology, but that world proved to me that just any imbecile can do it."

"No," Mint starts, "He's completely dead. He didn't regenerate after that explosion."

"That's a shame," the mistress starts, "Dukakis was a fool. He got what he wanted, but it proved to be too much. He tried to shut it down. It left him in the dust. Another pitiful waste of a life thrown away to the darkness. We'll just get someone new, someone fresh. Someone without any grudge to settle. Someone who can keep up. Someone pure of heart but wicked in mind, who doesn't mind how we will use the results. You still have the key to the lab, right?"

"I do," Mint responds, forcing herself towards calmness.

"Are any of his sycophantic goons still alive?" the mistress asks.

"Just Mondale," Mint responds, "That giant got killed by that freak boy. I think. The one with the red hair and the boomerangs that I couldn't take seriously. The robot is dead, too. Either Sora or Riku summoned lightning on top of it. Mondale was still on the computer system when that explosion killed Dukakis. He probably went back to the base."

"Someone like him is an orphaned dog," the mistress continues, "Loyal to a master that no longer exists. He will haunt his former home until the day something claims his purposeless life. But like any good dog, he should still be loyal to whoever once associated with his owner. I don't know what we'd do with him, but a lightning brute like him could come in handy. If not for his services as a fighter, than as another pawn to put out on the field. We'll have to pick him up while we're there."

"Wait," Mint starts in her haughty tone, turning around to face the mistress, "We're leaving now?"

"No time like the present," the mistress responds, "We don't want the base to collapse on itself from neglect, especially when the world itself is nothing but neglect."

"When are you going to start actually training me instead of sending me on these wild goose chases?" Mint asks, sounding incredulous.

"I am training you," the mistress responds, "Just because I'm not instructing you directly doesn't mean I'm not training you."

"I think you're just using me," Mint says, turning away. She crosses her arms and closes her eyes, holding her chin high.

"Use you?" the mistress responds, "Silly girl. I wouldn't use you like some disposable asset. You're like a daughter to me. I took you in when everybody else shunned you. I know how it feels to be rejected. I've helped you gain control of your power before you destroyed yourself. Beyond that, I'm trying to teach you how to master and perfect it. And I'm doing all this out of charity. I don't want anything from you in exchange. I only want you to realize your true potential and be happy for it."

"Well, I'm not happy," Mint starts, "You wasted a month of my life and all I learned is that you have some friggin' mysterious ways."

"Tell you what," the mistress starts, "After we get the research to a new scientist and take in Mondale, we'll lay low for a while. The king and his cronies can't suspect us. Not until we're ready. We'll let them think it was just Dukakis and his foolish vendetta and when they least suspect it, we'll strike. We'll take the keyblade by force and then, we shall truly master the Heartless."

"You promise?" Mint asks, turning around. She has a hopeful expression on her face, looking quite dissonant with her dour expression still lingering in the corners.

"Of course, I do," the mistress responds, "I haven't lied before, have I?"

"Whatever," Mint responds, "I'm sure you'll find an excuse. Let's just get this over with. I never want to walk on that world again."

"Excellent," the mistress responds.


	36. The Muse

Medical rooms are barren places, focused on what is necessary to keep the patient alive. They have to be. With all the bacterial diseases out there spreading at the slightest provocation, anything that can carry a high microbe count must go. The choice of materials is the most important step, minimizing the risk before it can take hold. Stainless steel is the preferred element of choice, easy to clean, near impossible to get dirty, and a hostile environment for bacteria. It might be a cold, colorless grey, but that only helps to differentiate it from the other materials. It might give a reflection clear enough to see oneself yet distorted enough to give an image of unease, but that only helps to make sure the colorless grey is actually the steel itself. It might be cold to the touch, but that only helps to keep certain strains of bacteria in a hypothermic and, thus, inactive state. It is the weapon of choice in the war against germs, the front lines in the constant battle for survival.

Anything that cannot be conceivably made out of stainless steel shall be made out of white plastic. Organic materials might gather bacteria, but that's what disinfecting UV lights are for. Bringing the worst of the sun straight to the germs, they are cruelly effective in their mass genocide. The only exception for these two preferred materials shall be the bed itself. Made out of low thread count cotton sheets and synthesized to be as unfriendly to microbes as possible, comfort comes as a secondary concern. If it wouldn't result in worse developments in health, stainless steel would be preferable here as well.

Riku hates hospitals for these reasons. They are not friendly places that one should bring their families for a day of relaxation. They are cold, sterile environments meant to protect people while paradoxically making them wish for an escape. Any escape. Escape from the building, escape from the impersonal staff, escape from the life that keeps them tethered to the unfeeling system. He gets shudders every time he has to enter a ward, almost tasting the decay around him. This is not a place for the living, but he must go forward. Kiko is here and she needs him now more than ever. He just has to continue his stride through the dark and barren hallways. One cold steel door later and he's in Kiko's room.

Kiko is lying in the bed, so beautiful, so pure, so innocent. In the dim light of the cold, invasive machinery that stand sentinel over her, Kiko's magnificence acts a beacon in the dark. The vague greys and subdued whites give way to the radiance of her perfectly combed blue hair and the softness of her supple skin. No sight lacking her could ever come close to perfection. Riku stands there in silent admiration, awe struck by the majesty that lays before him. He feels intimidated, as though to disturb her would be to transgress a sacred emblem. Here is the proof that religion is completely and irrevocably true, that God has a hand in the creation of the cosmos and was willing to grace it with the perfect person. It is not in Riku's place to meddle in divine affairs. But just as Riku was about to respectfully leave, fate played a different hand.

"I've been expecting you, Riku," Kiko says as she wakes up gently. Riku is taken aback by the angelic voice, so pure and sweet yet bold and confident. The divine entity that created Kiko out of the finest of materials certainly didn't want her to be something easily denounced, a trait that shows in her survival of the recent events. There is no mandate that states that something so pure has to be delicate. After all, diamonds are the hardest natural substance in the world.

"Kiko, I'm sorry to disturb you," Riku apologizes, bowing his head down in shame, "It is not in my place to sneak in while you are asleep. Please forgive me."

"You have done no wrong my eyes," Kiko starts, sitting up in the bed with a graceful gesture, "You have come here without malice, but with the best and purest of intentions. I can see it in your face and hear it in your voice."

"Really?" Riku says, amazed, as he lifts his head back up. He is stunned by Kiko's candor and kindness, surprised by her opinion. Riku has his regrets for his disregard for Kiko. His view of her was biased by envy and sullied by personal prejudice, reading traits into her that simply didn't exist by any stretch of imagination. His interpretation of her spirited comments as whiny ranting was a disservice. His interpretation of her inability to perform in combat as a sign of incompetence was a mid-judgment. His interpretation of her magnetism to him as the lustful yearnings of a girl deep in puberty was an insult. In truth, Riku was to blame for every last bit of this. He treated her concerns as a joke and downplayed all the issues she brought forth. He pressured her against her will to use faulty equipment and disregarded her warnings. He spurned her advances and left her unrequited. Every viewed transgression on Kiko's part was instead Riku's cruel treatment testing her restraint. A lesser person would have snapped by now, but Kiko's magnificent spirit remains unbroken and optimistic in spite of the harsh reality surrounding her.

"Come, sit," Kiko says with a warm smile and a sing-song tone, flinging the bed sheet aside as she moves to sit on the side. She's wearing this entrancing light blue silk nightgown, the illusion of translucency giving it this soft glow in the light. Just like Kiko herself, it is perfect in form and pure in essence. None of it bends or wrinkles, hanging perfectly off of her limber skin. Such beautiful curves and flawless lengths can't possibly be made of mere bone and sinew. Only the soul of an artist could create something of this opulence and certainly not the harsh mistress of evolution and its endlessly spiralling coils of self-replicating DNA. Riku can only obey, walking towards the light. He stands by the bed for an awkward couple of moments before Kiko pats the spot next to her, offering an invitation. Riku, still apprehensive about his worthiness to bask in Kiko's resplendence, sits beside her gently and haltingly. His mind is conflicted, both wanting to sit here next to Kiko but also searching for an excuse to get away, as though it would spare him of the possible humiliation he might inflict upon himself.

"So, how are you?" Kiko asks in a tone remniscent of Karen Carpenter. It isn't even so much like talking as it is the divine gospel, every word a deep revelation of a greater good.

"I just wanted to talk with you," Riku begins in a cautious tone, looking away from Kiko, "I'm sorry."

"What are you apologizing for?" Kiko asks, gently leaning back to look into Riku's eyes. The gaze of her hazel eyes seem to pierce right into the soul, yet instead of a feeling of judgment, it feels like an affirmation of Riku's virtue. One could get lost in those eyes.

"I'm sorry for bullying you," Riku says, looking back up and away out of shame, "I guess I felt like less of a person around you. It made me feel better about myself by pretending you were worse. You were something big I could tear down. I'm sorry I kept shrugging you off. I'm sorry I kept yelling at you. I'm sorry I put you through all of this needless crap."

"I forgive you," Kiko says as she sits back up, beaming at Riku. Oh, the beauty of her face. As a muse, she could inspire even the lowliest person to paint the Sistine Chapel, write The Iliad, or compose the Rite of Spring.

"I just feel bad compared to you," Riku starts in an honest tone of self-admonition, looking down to avoid her gaze, "Compared to you, I am but the palest shadow. You light up the life of everyone around you. You're beautiful, smart, witty. I am not anywhere as good as you, but you always choose to be around me. I always felt like you were making fun of me, like you were trying to show the world how unworthy I am. I guess-" Riku trails off when Kiko delicately lifts his chin up to look back in her eyes.

"Riku," Kiko starts, giving a soft, friendly chuckle, "I'm flattered you think I'm so perfect, but I am only human. I make mistakes and I get mad just like you. I could never live up to this ideal you set for me. Not by myself."

"But it's true," Riku responds. He is taken aback when Kiko lightly holds his hand, gently squeezing it just a little to get his attention. Her skin is as soft as cashmere, bringing to mind the most delicate of dresses designed by the greatest of seamstresses.

"Perfection cannot lie within a single person," Kiko starts in a poetic tone, "There is no such thing as the absolute person, for humanity is split into two separate but equal halves. Only through the joining of two souls can a perfect being be created." Riku looks down with embarrassment in response, but Kiko nudges his chin back up while moving in closer. "Before I met you, I felt empty and out of place. I was bullied relentlessly by my peers and trivialized by my parents. I always thought it was something wrong with me, but I realize now that it was because they envied and feared me. They forced me into low self-esteem because it was the only way to contain me. I thought it was happening again when I came to this world, but I figured out how wrong I was. For all I misinterpreted your put-downs, I realized they were love-struck cries for attention. Oh, how right I was."

"I realized the error of my ways after your brave sacrifice," Riku continues, feeling some strange warmness starting to well up within his epicenter, "At the thought of you being dead, it made me think of how much I enjoyed your presence. I knew I had to tell you even if it meant sneaking in at this time of the night. I needed to see you alone to express my feelings."

"You are the yin to my yang, the rajas to my sattva," Kiko says, moving in closer as she runs her fingers through Riku's hair, "Riku, you complete me." Riku and Kiko sit there for what feels like an eternity, their eyes locked in an unbreakable gaze. For Riku, the cold interior of the medical room has long since faded in the presence of Kiko's luminescence. In his eyes, there is nothing else in this world beside Kiko, the final piece to his life's greatest puzzle. The two gradually find themselves getting closer to each other, tilting their heads ever so slowly to accommodate each other. With a warm repose, the two find themselves in a gentle but passionate kiss. Oh, if only such a kiss could be described, for all the muse could do to inspire the greatest literature, no mere words could ever describe this sensation. So free of care, so liberated of stress, so boundless in joy. Like all good things, it has to come to an end as they drift away. Staring in each others' eyes, Kiko gives a joyful sigh.

"Are you sure you're ready?" Riku asks, his mind already so entwined with Kiko's as to forsee what she is thinking.

"Of course I am," Kiko says, moving her hand out of Riku's hair and reaching behind him to secure a soft embrace, "A love as timeless as our's need not wait any longer." They continue to stare into each other's eyes, their beaming smiles not even close to displaying what they're feeling inside. Not a single moment in Riku's life has ever felt as good as this. Kiko is so beautiful on both the outside and the inside, a true marvel to behold. Nothing that any benevolent creator could dream of would ever surpass her. To be gifted with someone so glorious is beyond comprehension. It almost feels like the choir of the angels above when Kiko takes the opportunity to sing from the heart.

_"__And I re- al- ize- you're- mineeee,_  
_Indeed a- fool- of- mineeee,_  
_And I re- al- ize- you're- mineeee,_  
_Indeed a- fool- of- mineeee,_  
_Ahhhhhh"_

"Heaven smiles abooooove me," Riku continues in his best singing voice, "What- a- gift-, there- be- low. But no- one- knows." Just as they start to close in to each other for a deeper and more soulful kiss, Kiko starts flickering. The color drains from her as her curves flatten, her form breaking apart. Her body bursts into a thousand quickly dissipating triangles as Riku falls right through her. His momentum continues as the bed starts breaking apart in a similar fashion, falling through and landing face first on the ground. Disoriented, he picks himself up to see the rest of the room breaking apart in a similar fashion, the floors and walls changing into rubberized black and grey tiles. He looks at his hands to see his fingers tips starting to flicker. The change goes through him like a wave, his hands and arms shrinking down to a slim and slender size as his clothes shift towards a white cotton. He feels his skeletal structure starting to shift, his hips expanding and back arching as the muscle drains out slowly. He feels the tightness in his pants go away as two mounds start expanding and swelling on his chest. His hair starts to lose its clumps and shift to a darker shade as he feels a tight object wrapping around his head.

Dark realization washes over her as she sits there, unable to move from the shock. Kiko's simulation has been ended prematurely and unexpectedly, leaving her disoriented, confused, and despondent. She had finally gotten the simulation just the way she liked it this time. The emotions, the imagery, the sensations, all robbed from her at the critical moment. She looks around for the perpetrators of this horrible crime, finding a couple robots hovering in from the open door with buckets and mops. She stares harshly at them, wishing she could do something to release her indignant rage. How dare those unfeeling machines rob this from her? They don't even understand the slightest implication of what they have done. Those cold automatons surround her even now, staring at her with those unblinking eyes. Her hands trembling, she loses control.

"GODDAMN YOU!" Kiko shouts, pounding on the one in front of her, "GODDAMN YOU TO HELL, YOU FREAKING BASTARDS! WHY DID YOU DO THAT TO ME?! WHY?! IT WAS PERFECT! PERFECT!" Kiko feels a bunch of cold, rubberized talons grab onto her shoulders. As she struggles to break free, she gets lifted up off of the ground and carried towards the open doorway. The robots stop suddenly, dropping their grips and tossing her outside through the momentum in the process. As she collapses to the floor, the emotions reach a crescendo and she starts crying uncontrollably. What a cruel world to find the one thing beautiful in her life and rob it from her. She barely even registers the clunky data disk hitting her head, turning around to see the doors to the simulation room slide close with a certain finality. Behind those doors lie her broken dreams, her one chance at true perfection gone as the harsh mistress of reality leaves behind another broken wreck.


	37. Glare and Inference

And that has been Kiko's life for a good while. Spend some time in the simulation room each day to keep her spirits up despite the soul-crushing reality around her. Only half the week gives a good amount of quality time, but what can she do? While Kiko was angry over this intrusion, it wasn't really that big a deal to her once she got her wits about her. The robots might have interrupted her at a really bad time with their scheduled maintenance, but that's just to be expected when the arrangement is under the table to begin with. Hopefully, just like her cheating at the hedge maze, the robots won't report her intrusion in the simulation rooms either. It's already been a day and nothing has come of it, so she's probably in the clear. Regardless, the script could use a little work. The program is really good at generating dialogue, but it needs some more personal touches. In retrospect, the song might be from her favorite band, but it's not really meshing too well with the celestial approach. While the 'fool' could be metaphorical, it still suggests something of a master-slave relationship and that isn't how Kiko views Riku. If only she could remember something else they did that fits better. Maybe 'Little Sister', but she can barely remember the chorus of that one. Something with 'show you all my love', but it's escaping her at the moment. No matter. Plenty of time to work on the script in Tactical Awareness, with the lax teaching of none other than Professor Uina providing an easy bypass.

"...and that's the scenario," Uina finishes, the overhead projector settling on some building schematics, "Perhaps someone that hasn't answered a question yet can give this one a whirl. Someone whose mouth has probably sealed itself shut from lack of use. Kiko?"

"That one's simple," Kiko starts in a passive tone, not even bothering to look up, "You don't give us enough credit if you think we need a full team for that. We don't even need anything special."

"Excuse me?" Uina asks, sounding a bit insulted.

"There are five terrorists and six hostages," Kiko resumes, pointing at the screen with her pencil as she keeps staring down into her notebook, "Building access logs show seven official entries, the last with four guests. The timing shows that there was a sixteen minute gap between that last access and the police setting up a stake out, during which, they scanned no magic in use outside of a single type one Heartless summoner. It is extremely unlikely that any terrorist group would have people wait outside while they are rounding up potentially armed and dangerous security guards and subverting the security, especially when they're outnumbered. Terrorists that work like this are cowards by default and also don't care that much about subtlety. Then you look at the timing. The video making demands shows a clock in the background that confirms it started filming at the fourteen minute mark, with the leader and at least one camera operator in the room showcasing the six hostages. Assuming they run at an athletic speed and there weren't any guards to get in the way, it would take about five minutes to run through the hallways and get to any of the four corners of the basement with a security node. Regardless how optimistic you are, you need at least two minutes to subvert a node if it has anything close to a corporate level defense to it. If they sent four people to the basement in perfect harmony, they could have the system shut down in seven minutes without the police catching on."

"However," Kiko continues, waving her pencil from side to side, "That video was taken on the fourth floor. Since the elevator system would be shut down in the process of subverting the nodes, that means that the run from one of the corner rooms to the central basement access, up the stairs, to a main stairwell, up to the fourth floor, and to the room in question would be about six minutes. The camera would have to be set up on its tripod within one minute. During this time, the one person not subverting the nodes would have to find all the security guards, subdue them, and bring them all to that fourth floor room. With the guards spread out as they are if they follow their shifts, it would take that one man about twenty five minutes minimum. That dismisses the four person in the basement theory. Two people going for guards would take about fifteen minutes while three people would take about ten. The two people in the basement would, at best, need another six minutes to successfully subvert the system. Four minutes to run to another side and two minutes to subvert that node. This is, of course, assuming that they are perfect and have enough confidence in their ability to cut it so close in their simultaneous shutdown. An extra group would be able to enter around the thirteen minute mark, but by that point, the police have already started to show up for the stake-out and would have seen them outside."

"But how does this information matter?" Uina asks, "You ramble about something so ancillary to the situation."

"Knowing that there are five people," Kiko continues, pointing at a part of the map as she flips a page of her notebook over, "And at least one is guarding the hostages and managing the communication with the police, that leaves only one person to watch each side of the building. It's unlikely they'll even bother to post anybody to watch the front due to police procedure and the wide open space for sniping that would divert any attempt of entry. However, you can never be too sure when you deal with paranoid people like hostage taking terrorists. That's why you set up two sniper rifles on remote and arm them with low caliber rounds. Set them at the maximum accurate range and have them each target the arm of a Heartless. They should be able to non-lethally hit them, giving away the position and drawing them in. Aim for ones at the two front corners so that the whole front courtyard will be cleared out as they run for the sides."

"And the point of that is...?" Uina asks.

"Regardless who the Heartless controller is," Kiko continues, "They will have to recall the person watching the front. They need to keep the other four positions covered and the controller will have to go to both sides of the building at some point. Since they're terrorists, they'll be paranoid and want to regain control as soon as possible, so they should be busy within at most thirty seconds. One operative on our end enters through the front courtyard wearing urban camouflage and armed with a silenced tranquilizer gun, a smoke grenade, and a tear gas grenade. It should take about twenty seconds to run from the last available hiding place to the front door. There is no way that the controller can regain the Heartless by then and have somebody back on watch. The terrorists will have no reason to think that this is anything more than just the Heartless being their usual unreliable selves and will be none the wiser about the involvement of external forces."

"The operative will go to the elevator and access the maintenance shaft," Kiko continues, still not looking up, "According to the plans, it should be possible to get inside the hostage room through ventilation after climbing the shaft up three and a half levels. The ventilation ducts are wide enough for a person to fit and padded enough to not make any sound along the way. The grate leading into the room should give an accurate assessment of the targets inside, which should only be two at the most. Once the operative has a bearing, they will burst the grate open and hit the one or two hostage takers, starting with the one closest to the hostages. It should only take maybe half a second after hitting the first to get the second. Much faster than any untrained terrorist could stand to get a shot off, much less even figure out what is happening. When the leader hits the ground wearing their communication system, the other terrorists should become aware of the intrusion at this point, but they will have to spend about a minute to get back to the room. If the terrorists are smart, they will not try to enter the room until they are all gathered outside. The operative will get the hostages underneath the thick board room table and detonate both of the grenades right by the door as they wait out of range. When the terrorists burst in, they will run right into a cloud that both obstructs their vision and irritates their breathing. The operative will pick them off from there."

"Dart, dart, dart," Kiko says, making a flicking motion with her pencil with each word, "Terrorists disabled, hostages safe. One necessary person, three pieces of mundane equipment. No magic, no high technology, no million to one chance, nothing but good old fashioned training. If the Heartless don't go away, radio the police and tell them to open fire. They might just be sitting ducks for a while without a controller, but you can never be too careful when dealing with soul killing monstrosities."

"Kiko," Uina starts in a proud tone, "That is certainly an extravagant and creative way to go about this situation. Your idea plays on the weaknesses of terrorists in general and would be an absolutely stellar plan, but it has one major flaw."

"It has no flaws," Kiko responds arrogantly, starting to write something in her notebook. Uina gives an annoyed sigh and snatches it away from her with a quick snap. Kiko's focus is broken immediately, a bit of panic starting to set in as she starts to try and regain her orientation. What was she doing?

"Your plan fails to take into account the police," Uina explains, going back to the front of the classroom with the notebook in hand, "As finicky as terrorists are in maintaining hostage situations, the police are way more so in their protection of themselves and innocent civilians. It's why hostage situations always come to these standstills in the first place. The Heartless will start rushing the line after those shots hit them, prompting the police to open fire out of a perceived self-defense. It doesn't matter if you tell them what you intend to do. At least a couple of the members of the barricade are going to fire and it will escalate from there. This will lead to an assumption that negotiations have failed and the terrorists are attempting to overpower the police as part of an escape plan, prompting the snipers to take out anybody they can find watching out the windows as they send in their infiltration teams that have been on standby since the beginning. It's a guarantee that at least one of the terrorists will get killed during this, perhaps even the leader if he's the Heartless controller and does try to calm the Heartless down. At this point, the terrorists will start executing hostages to try to regain control of the situation, especially if the leader is dead. In fact, if the leader is dead, they will execute all of them at once. Terrorists without a leader are consigned to death, spiteful at the world and taking it out on everybody within their reach. They might have even brought explosives with them to detonate, destroying the building in the process. No matter how slow the reactions of anybody involved or how fast the operative works, innocent people are going to die. Mission failed."

"But... but..." Kiko starts, trying to figure out what she was saying. She hates when this happens. It's scary beyond belief to think that without any conscious effort, she'll talk with people about sensitive issues like this.

"Since you've obviously been taking notes this whole time," Uina starts, flipping through the pages, "Let's see what insight they hold... my, this is different than I expected."

"Not again," Kiko says, ducking into her desk to avoid the stares of the other classmates. Chou is watching, looking sympathetic instead of critical. Somehow, alien-girl's sympathy just makes the situation even worse. What does she understand about this? For all Kiko knows, she wants to hurt her for interrupting good class time. Uina just quietly reads the document in his hands, giving a sigh after a minute and closing the book. He saw what he needed to see.

"Well," Uina starts, his tone a mixture of annoyance and bemusement, "Everybody here except Miss Daydream Believer is far ahead of the curriculum. I'm honestly impressed with all of you. As a reward, I'm dismissing class now. Go spend the next twenty minutes reading up on your other assignments or whatever." Kiko just sits there as everybody leaves, unsure of what to do. He didn't say for her to stay, but it's usually just an assumption when a teacher acts like this. Uina starts reading his notes as he sits down on the table, not saying anything. He doesn't seem to really be searching for anything, just reading his documents for the sake of reading them. Kiko eventually decides that he probably did mean her as well if he's just going to sit there, standing up and starting to head to the door.

"I didn't say you could go," Uina calls out, stopping Kiko in her tracks, "I have something important to discuss with you."

"What?" Kiko asks, turning around to face him. He's standing back up, the notebook by his side.

"Is there anything you want to talk about?" Uina asks, his voice expecting a specific answer. Kiko hates when people do this. So much.

"No," Kiko responds. What could he understand about her problems?

"Bull," Uina starts, "There's something you want to talk about."

"There's nothing I want to talk about," Kiko responds, really not wanting to have to tell him anything about her current life, "Leave me alone."

"Then there is something I want to talk about," Uina counters, his tone getting a bit snippy, "It's about your performance."

"What about it?" Kiko starts, "Of course I suck. I'm not made for this crap. You told me yourself that I never would have got in were it not for the involvement of sector nine. I would have never lasted past the screening, much less even be asked to join in the first place."

"It is true that you've fallen behind the rest of the class," Uina continues, "I won't deny that. By any objective measure, you're a bad student. You shrug off your class work, you ignore our lectures, you're not even trying to learn how to put up a fight. The other students find you just a little creepy and outside of Sora, Riku, and Kairi, you haven't tried to socialize with anybody. Greg even came to me, of all people, when he wanted to ask you out because he thought that maybe I knew what was up with you. Also, you sleep way too much. After your only three friends go off on their own, you just go straight to bed and sleep until the morning. You didn't even leave your bedroom last Saturday except to go to the water closet."

"Am I going to be kicked out?" Kiko asks, unsure if she should really care or not. Maybe the Radiant Garden police no longer care about her. It has been quite a while, after all, and there's no reason to believe they'd keep tabs on some little girl like her.

"Of course not," Uina responds, "You put us in a hard place. Sora has been adamant about not kicking you. He might not be management, but he has the king's ear and this isn't exactly a democracy running the school. I can't say I approve of the fifteen year old having this much sway, but he did sort of save the universe a few times. Anyway, I see potential in you. Your problem is that you're applying some sort of external logic to everything. You went through the celestial system and you were given a set of skills. Why are you ignoring them in favor of your skewed videogame logic?"

"Excuse me?" Kiko asks, "I'm only good if I panic. I-"

"That's just the point," Uina interrupts, "You think too much. Your brain tries to rationalize what goes into an action. You think about the placement of your gun. You think about how much pull you have, how much the wind is going to affect your bullet, about the best place to hit the enemy. That's why you fail."

"Why is-" Kiko starts.

"You don't think about fighting," Uina continues, "You just do it. Maybe you think about the greater tactics, but your only thought when you want to shoot something is 'I want that thing to die'. Don't hesitate, just do it. This is why you practice, practice, practice."

"But-" Kiko tries to interject.

"You even proved me right earlier," Uina starts, "Buried in your fantasies about Riku, you actually answered that question exceedingly well. It might have missed a really obvious point, but your solution not only came the closest to fixing that dilemma, it also didn't involve any magic at all. You didn't even seem to recognize that it's technically supposed to be unwinnable by any measure."

"Wait, what?" Kiko asks, "That's kind of scary."

"Moving on," Uina continues, "I have some other stuff to talk with you about. First, this." Uina holds up the notebook, using his thumb and index finger on a corner to keep it far away from him. It almost seems like he finds it reprehensible to the touch.

"What about it?" Kiko asks. Uina pulls out a thirty centimeter long brass baton type thing and holds it right up to the notebook, clockwork gears all over it and some type of white glowing thing barely visible inside. Its purpose is completely beyond Kiko; it could be an automatic comb for all she knows. With a loud fwoosh, an unusually tinted orange flame jets out, completely consuming the all of the notebook but the tiny corner that Uina is holding. He drops the small piece before the flame touches his fingers.

"Hey!" Kiko shouts, enraged at this callous action. She has been working on this script for weeks since she discovered a program dedicated to romance instead of mindless sex. The program gave her some really good ideas and now they're gone.

"I'm putting your blue program privileges on indefinite suspension," Uina starts in an official sounding tone, "Your obsession with the Daydream Believer program is detrimental to your studies as well as both your physical and mental health. You won't be able to check out any programs, though you can accompany other people. Be social for a change. You don't exist in a vacuum, after all."

"You can't do that," Kiko says, astonished. How dare he just burn her notebook like that. There were lots of story ideas and drawings and stuff in it.

"Not only can I do that," Uina retorts, vindictive, "I am doing that. It's for your own good."

"But..." Kiko says, disappointed, "I'm just feeling so bad about myself."

"You're only going to make yourself feel worse if you keep doing this," Uina continues, "I won't let you spend your life in a simulation. I'm already seeing neuroses starting to pop up based on all your data. That last simulation alone made me want to gag."

"You've been watching?!" Kiko shouts, enraged at this invasion of privacy, "You pervert!"

"Yes, I've been watching," Uina continues, "Ever since Professor Kern started letting you have six and three quarter hours of free simulation time a week, I took it upon myself to make sure you weren't abusing the system. I already know that she's pretty corrupt, but at least she's just doing this out of survival. Ten person rule and all that with no home world to go to. Also, I find it ironic that you call me a pervert when you're the one seducing yourself as a man."

"But..." Kiko says, going red with embarrassment. She never really thought of it like that before.

"God," Uina starts, "Freud would have a field day with you. That Anna O. girl wouldn't even be a footnote compared to the insights you'd give. The field of psychology would be forever talking about you like you were World War II. They'd be constantly posing questions to figure out your psyche. Was it envy of men? Hatred of yourself? Maybe you're a lesbian in denial? Maybe it isn't self-denial, but your stalking of Riku is supposed to be your beard by proxy? Maybe you think you suck so much that even a simulation of Riku would run away from you?"

"Argh!" Kiko shouts, losing control at this unfair berating. She lunges at Uina, balling up a fist and pulling her arm back. Uina effortlessly dodges to the side as Kiko throws an amateurish punch, shoving his baton right at the base of her skull as she stumbles in front of him. A slight feeling of electricity causes Kiko to freeze up, unable to move. Something about the baton is blocking her motor movements, preventing her from doing much of anything but staring forward and breathing. All this sensory deprivation is starting to get to her.

"Please calm down," Uina starts in a partially condescending tone as he solidifies his position, "I'm sorry if you're so bent out of shape about this. Honestly, I thought you'd be more mature given how you put up with asshole Williams on a daily basis, but whatever. Not my problem. You should know by now that attacking a professor is pretty far on the deep end of the chart of unacceptable behavior. If I really wanted to, I could get you expelled and put in prison for this without even King Mickey being able to intervene, but I won't. I'm not going to hold a grudge because you can't hold your feelings. Also, I obviously hit a really big sore spot and I apologize. It was inconsiderate of me to comment on what must be a very intimate topic that agitates you a great deal. Now, if I let you free, are we going to be cool?"

"Nnnnnngh," Kiko responds.

"I'll take that as a yes," Uina says, taking his baton away from her skull with a quick flick. Kiko's stance stutters a little, her body instinctively correcting itself before she falls flat on her face. Uina grabs a desk and spins it around to face another, sitting down with a certain kind of grace that one is not used to seeing. Kiko takes the position opposite of him, doing her best to calm down. He caught her off-guard with those comments, but she's ready now. Bring on the vitriol. "So, anything you want to talk about?" Uina asks, his tone now completely neutral.

"I'm just feeling really depressed," Kiko starts, "I feel like my Asperger's syndrome is get-"

"Stop," Uina interrupts.

"But-"

"No," Uina starts, "You do not have Asperger's syndrome. Don't even try to convince me otherwise."

"But I-"

"Look," Uina starts, "I am a certified professional with a doctorate in psychiatry. Or at least I was back in the old world. No difference in either event. Just because you read about Asperger's syndrome in a magazine and thought that it sounds just like you doesn't mean you have it. Honestly, I'm sick and tired of you kids and your self-diagnosed psychological problems that you use as excuses for your ineptitude. No. Just no. You aren't failing your classes because you have dyslexia. You wouldn't be writing scripts where you bag yourself as your unrequited love if you have dyslexia. Just because you can't keep up with the reading material doesn't mean you have a condition of any kind. And just because you are too scared to just go up to Riku and ask him for a date on your own doesn't mean you have Asperger's syndrome. You are a geek because you grew up isolating yourself from other people and living your life in books or TV or whatever. Not because you have a medical condition."

"But..." Kiko starts, feeling a bit mad that he's not even listening to her, "A doctor told-"

"You were given Ritalin, weren't you?" Uina asks.

"Yes," Kiko responds. Now that was a bad time of her life she wishes she could forget.

"If there was ever a real definition for Asperger's syndrome," Uina continues, "Or autism, or attention deficit disorder, or whatever the new medical buzzword going around the soccer mom population is, it got killed by the executives over at Novartis Pharmaceuticals in their strive to get every kid hooked on their legalized amphetamines. God, I hate those bastards. They're just lowly drug dealers giving a huge paycheck to the corrupt doctors across America to hand out ritalin like lollipops to people who aren't able to argue against it. Hell, they may as well start manufacturing them on sticks and handing them out after every physical."

"...Professor..." Kiko starts. She thought of an idea that might get him on her side. Not a very good idea, but an idea. Desperate times call for desperate measures, after all.

"What?" Uina responds, sounding a bit irritated by the interruption to his rant.

"I wish you were at my school," Kiko starts, "All the school psychologist did for me was tell me I have to take Ritalin. He just gave me a prescription and sent me out without listening to me. But you're different. You're not like them."

"You mean it?" Uina asks, "I never had a student ever compliment me before. Or a parent. Or a faculty member, for that matter."

"You're against the system," Kiko continues, drawing from her memories of old TV shows, "Instead of helping to buy another BMW for those assholes sitting in their board rooms and chomping their cigars, you're actually going for the root of the problem and-"

"Now, now," Uina interrupts, chuckling, "Flattery will get you everywhere, my dear, but it's not why we're here. Anyway, tell me, what else has got you down?"

"I have no good music to listen to," Kiko starts, "Are you sure that's all you have?"

"You don't like Nirvana?" Uina starts, "I thought they were really popular amongst high school students like you."

"I hate Nirvana," Kiko starts, "Bunch of whiny emo guys that can't play their instruments. I hate what Kurt Cobain did to music. He made it into all this whiny crap. I don't care that he blew out his brains with a shotgun. That doesn't make him special. Anyway, the only song on any of these CDs that's any good is 'Plush'. Are you sure you don't have anything by Queens of the Stone Age?"

"I don't know who they are," Uina responds in a matter of fact tone.

"You don't know who the Queens of the Stone Age are?" Kiko responds in disbelief, "They're only the best band ever. They make awesome songs like 'No One Knows', 'Little Sister', 'Go With The Flow'... are you sure you don't know them?"

"They were probably after I got dragged here," Uina continues, "You do remember that I come from 1998, don't you? Not the day before you did."

"Are you sure you don't have any other CDs?" Kiko asks, "Because whoever owned these ones sucks."

"I'd never give up my CD collection for anything," Uina continues, "Listening to my favorite childhood bands such as Blue Oyster Cult, Deep Purple, Aerosmith, and Boston are what keep me focused on my goal. I can't lose my identity to this universe, no matter how hard it claws at me. I doubt you'd appreciate any of these bands, anyway."

"Aerosmith is okay," Kiko starts, "I like 'Beyond Beautiful', but their other stuff isn't that good. I don't know who those other guys are."

"Well, back on topic," Uina starts, "I want you to go to lunch. Obviously, you can't skip meals if you want to stay in this school. Fitness is your top priority. Find Sora and Riku and tell them we have to talk during dinner. I'll have some food brought to my office."

"Well... okay," Kiko says, deflated. She really wanted to listen to something new. Maybe nothing can ever compare to Queens of the Stone Age, but at least something besides the whiny crap would be nice.

"I'll see you later," Uina starts, getting out of his chair, "Cheer up a bit. Your life doesn't suck near as much as you think it does. I'll see you later."

"See you later," Kiko responds as Uina walks out of the room.


	38. White Wash

Out of the classroom and into the hallway Kiko goes, heading towards the opulent dining room. It kind of bugs Kiko how mundane everything has become over the past month. She used to find wonder in the grand hallways, the intricate wallpaper, and the rhythmic movements of the incredibly stylistic robots, but now, it's starting to feel like she may as well be back at her old high school. The colors all just seem to run together, the only details popping out being the ones that identify major landmarks in the navigation of the castle. It's actually starting to irritate her because the average walk between classes requires a lot more time than even the most contrived path from the furthest ends of the Hometown High School. It doesn't help that Kiko always sort of imagined that this would be an adventure a day type of place, but it has the same sort of routine that permeated the rest of life. Grab a tray, grab some food, sit down by the usual trio, and talk with Sora and Kairi out of eventual boredom because Riku brushes off most conversation attempts. Today is no different.

"So, um... how are you, Kiko?" Sora asks, looking at Kiko with a tilt to his head and a smile on his face.

"I'm okay," Kiko responds. She has to figure out a natural way to ask Sora and Riku to come to Uina's quarters for dinner. Maybe it would have been helpful to be given a reason why she should bring them in, but it's too late for that now.

"So, Kiko," Sora starts, derailing her train of thought, "Have you heard about this weekend?"

"No," Kiko responds. What could he be talking about? Another boring concert of people that wouldn't even be worthy to be the roadies for Queens of the Stone Age?

"We're going to another world," Sora starts, "Another Heartless uprising has been detected. We're going to have another team building exercise out there."

"After that last one?" Kiko starts, "It was a total disaster. How could they even think of sending us back out?"

"We're taking more precautions this time," Riku explains, "It was irresponsible of us to leave you alone like last time. We'll bring your pistols and knives this time so it won't happen again."

"But what about the White Stars?" Kiko asks.

"King Mickey won't budge on his position," Riku responds, "At least I convinced him to just dump them off in some country town about half the world away from us for the trip."

"That's... reassuring," Kiko responds. It's already pretty apparent that they can travel wherever they damn well want, so it seems like a stalling action at best.

"Kairi and I were wondering if you'd like to join us," Sora says. Another interesting question. Kiko finds this quite awkward, not really wanting to be Sora's partner again. It just doesn't seem to be helping to be chummy with him or Kairi, so it would not even indirectly benefit her progress. Really, what she needs is alone time with Riku. Real alone time, not this bad context type that has been the order of the day. Kiko turns to Riku, finding that he's already about to say something.

"Now, now," Riku starts, "This is basically just a glorified vacation. It's a nice place, the weather is great, the locals are friendly, and they accept our currency. I drew the short straw, so I have to do the actual work while we're there."

"But..." Kiko starts, "I want to go with you. I feel like I hardly know you."

"Kiko," Riku starts, "You need a vacation more than I need a partner. You're always so stressed and melancholy all the time. What you seriously need is some time away from the school."

"But you should have a partner," Kiko responds. Grasping at straws here, but one percent is better than none.

"If I need backup, I'll call for it," Riku responds, looking at Sora with a smirk, "Besides, I think Sora needs one a lot more than I do."

"Hey..." Sora responds, sounding like he's mocking the vague insult rather than actually being offended by it.

"So, please," Riku starts, ignoring Sora, "Go with Sora and Kairi. Get some ice cream, meet some new people, buy some clothes, have some fun. I'll be fine."

"But..." Kiko starts, not sure how to continue. Riku is smiling at her with an expression of expectancy, darting his eyes from her over to Sora and back again in some crude signaling attempt. Sora is just smiling widely, giving off this sort of warmth. Kairi isn't really doing much of anything, but she never does anything. Kiko doesn't know what she should do. She needs to get Riku by himself for some bonding time, but he insists that she go with Sora. A real lose-lose situation if there ever was one. "I'll go with you, Sora," Kiko says, giving her best smile to him. Neutral is better than negative and he definitely wouldn't go along with her if she pissed him off.

"Thank you," Sora says, "Don't worry, I won't allow you to get bored for even a second."

"Oh," Kiko starts, turning to Riku, "Professor Uina wanted to have a meeting at dinner. He asked me to get you and Sora for it."

"During dinner?" Riku asks, sounding a bit incredulous.

"Yeah," Kiko continues, "He said he'd bring food."

"Um, excuse me..." Kairi starts, sounding kind of shy, "May I come?" That's certainly an interesting question. Uina only mentioned getting Sora and Riku. He didn't specify if it only had to be them, but he's usually so secretive about everything. Still, he has to know by now that Sora, Riku, and Kairi are inseparable and whatever one finds out probably seeps to the other two. May as well include her directly.

"Yeah, sure," Kiko responds. If Uina has a problem with it, he can stuff it.

"What does he want to talk about?" Riku asks.

"I don't know," Kiko responds in a sincere tone for a change, "He just asked me to get you two. He didn't say why."

"I guess there's no reason to be suspicious," Riku concedes, "He's spent the past sixteen years working by King Mickey's side. He's singlehandedly responsible for every single technological design we use and is probably the most important person at this school. Of course we'll talk with him."

"Thank you," Kiko responds. No reason she should thank them, but it's a nice gesture.

"So..." Sora starts in a topic changing tone, "Hear about that upset at the recent Radiant Raiders game?"

**--**

And so, there was another dull reiteration of the daily routine. It really sort of miffs Kiko that all her three friends talk about are things that she can't contribute to. It's not even like it offers much insight to Riku, since he's always so passive about everything. Just sort of listens and occasionally makes some minor small talk. This lunch was no different and neither was the small break period after it. Stealth Training is just the usual hour and fifteen minutes of frustration, but no matter. Time for Professor Uina's big meeting. Kiko proves to be the first person to arrive, standing solitary outside of room 802.

"Hey, there, Kiko!" Sora calls out from down the ramp. Kiko turns to find him and Kairi walking up, the latter carrying a book bag with both her hands. The former is wearing his iconic outfit for some reason, but the real surprise is the latter. She's wearing this similar style of billowy mesh outfit, a light purple and fuchsia motif of patches broken up by black lines and an excessive number of zippers. She has this kind of odd look to her, one that sort of implies an indecision between a suit of armor and an evening dress.

"Hey, Sora, Kairi," Kiko calls back, "What's with the outfits?"

"Oh, it's nothing," Sora responds as the two of them walk up, "I just wanted to look my best. It's not every day a professor calls a personal meeting, much less one with so much tenure."

"I guess," Kiko continues, turning to face Kairi, "When did you get that?"

"Oh, this?" Kairi responds, pushing her shoulders out a bit as she looks down, "I got it a few days ago. Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather made it for me. It's just like the one they made for Sora."

"Yeah," Kiko responds. She restrains herself from making a remark about the obviousness of Kairi's statement. There's no reason to be mean. It's not like people here know how many spoilers Kiko was armed with.

"Hey, guys," Riku calls out from behind Kiko. She turns around to find him also in his iconic outfit, smiling and waving as he walks towards them. The mood of this picture would be awesome if it weren't undermined by Chou walking beside him. This really miffs Kiko to no end. She can understand Kairi being brought along for this meeting, but Chou? What the hell is he thinking?

"Rik-" Kiko tries to start.

"If I know Professor Uina," Riku starts, sensing Kiko's line of thought and pouncing to action, "This is just to test another theory. He asks us to come in all the time. I'm really disappointed that you didn't ask Chou to come."

"But he only said you and Sora," Kiko responds, "I swear."

"Whatever," Riku responds, "We'll see."

"I thought you said it wasn't every day you met him?" Kiko asks of Sora as she turns to face him. Why would he lie about something like this?

"He doesn't usually meet us face to face," Sora explains, "Just has us answer a pre-recorded set of questions or stand in one of his scanners for a minute. Nothing like this."

"Hey, Kiko," Chou says in a soft tone as she walks up. It almost takes Kiko by surprise.

"Yeah?" Kiko responds in her best attempt of a polite tone as she turns to face the alien. Riku puts up with her for some reason, so it would only hurt to be rude.

"It's been a while," Chou continues, "How are you doing?"

"Good, I guess," Kiko answers. Be flat, be vague, and nothing should come of it.

"I know you tell me you don't blame me for anything," Chou starts in that tedious apologetic tone of her's, "But I feel like you don't really want to be around me."

"Er..." Kiko starts, her peripheral vision catching Riku's glance, "I don't feel like that. I'm sorry if I seem like that."

"I'm happy you're okay with me," Chou says, giving a closed eye wide smile as she fishes something out of her pocket, "I have a present for you."

"A present?" Kiko asks, a bit confused. Chou hands over a necklace made of various oddly shaped, flat colored stones on a fuzzy string.

"I made this just for you," Chou says, continuing her eager smile, "It's to symbolize our friendship. I hope you like it."

"Thank you," Kiko responds, not really meaning it, "I didn't know they sold make-your-own-jewelry kits here."

"I'm glad you like it!" Chou says cheerfully, oblivious to the undertone. Kiko is not sure what she should do with this thing. It's gaudy and poorly made, looking more like the first attempt of an overeager eight year old girl to make a necklace. The string seems like it will just snap with even just a slight tug. The other issue is what it might do to her. Since the Feylinus are really damn mysterious in everything they do, for all Kiko knows, this necklace might mutate her into one of them or something. It doesn't seem to be doing anything right now, though, so the best course of action is probably to just hang onto it in a pocket and ask Uina to scan it for her at some other time. She's distracted from this line of thought when the door to room 802 opens, revealing Uina in a half-undressed yellow hazard suit over his usual sweater vest.

"Hello, everybody," Uina says, "I see we have some guests along with us. I was only really expecting three people, but the more, the merrier, I guess."

"I'm ready for more tests, Professor!" Chou says in a tone of forced enthusiasm. Now here's somebody whose cheerfulness is misplaced.

"Oh, there aren't any more tests," Uina responds, "But let's not all stand out here. Come on in, make yourselves at home."

Everybody files into the cramped office, avoiding stacks of boxes that take up a good chunk of the room. This place looks quite different than usual, with most of the inspirational posters lying on a stack in a corner and everything but the computer moved off of the desk. There are three chairs facing said desk, each downright spartan in their purpose. The boxes that fill the room have many varieties of shipping labels on them, all of them with a smaller standardized label bearing a robot code slapped on somewhere. Of the only two boxes that are open, Kiko is able to see some brass stuff in one and a chunk of unrefined blue crystal in another. He must be working overtime on some project, since Kiko always assumed somebody like him has his own lab somewhere in the castle. Uina takes the seat at the desk, with the girls getting the other three chairs as the guys concede.

"Please forgive the mess," Uina starts, "I would have cleaned up some if I knew Chou and Kairi were coming."

"Sorry," Riku whispers into Kiko's ear from behind, causing shivers to go through her. Maybe he does really care about her feelings?

"Before I start," Uina says, unstrapping some more buckles from his suit, "Does anybody have any questions... yes, Riku?"

"What are all these boxes for?" Riku asks, simply and directly.

"I'm glad you asked," Uina responds, tossing aside the top of the suit, "My other project is taking up my lab at the moment. I have to use my office for this other stuff right now. We'll talk about both in a minute."

"Anyway," Uina begins, moving his computer monitor to a better angle for everybody to see, "I still haven't figured out what happened back on Discord IV. As I mentioned, the Heartless power balance shifted quite a bit after that day. My scanners were no longer picking up the same distribution of leader Heartless, which convinced me that it was destroyed completely and totally. Obviously, this never happens, so I was a bit suspicious. About two weekends ago, I decided to try using my old scan data to try searching for their resonant frequencies rather than just their darkness quotients. As it turned out, that leader wasn't quite destroyed after all. I eventually managed to track it down to a dying planet on the edges of a red giant system and I couldn't believe what I saw."

"You mean there are Heartless we can't detect destroying worlds now?" Riku asks. Uina ignores the question as he taps some keys, pulling up a video on the monitor. It genuinely surprises Kiko to see not the usual inky black creatures, but something made out of pure light. There is one large creature and four smaller ones, the latter in the shape of the usual Shadows. The big creature looks kind of like Darkside, but without the gaping hole in the chest. There are glittering tendrils that look like those plasma balls you can buy from an executive toy catalog, just randomly waving around as they dissipate at random points within a meter. The expression on the face of this creature is not one of an apathetic despair, but a serene calm. It's a really subtle difference, but it somehow comes across. The whole room has a sort of radiant glow to it, grass growing around the big Heartless and butterflies of all colors flying around and landing on the big guy.

"What the hell?" Kiko asks. A bit of an understatement compared to what she's feeling.

"My thoughts exactly," Uina continues, "This is a live feed from my lab. No, I didn't have any soil in there and the whole place is hermetically sealed. There isn't even any oxygen in there any more. By all rights, those plants and insects just simply shouldn't exist, but here they are. Let me show you the pictures of the world."

Uina taps some more of the keys, changing to some type of photo album program. The first picture is an orbital shot of a full planet with a harsh red sun in the background, glowing red cracks on a blackened surface giving a sense of imminent destruction. Uina changes to a closer picture, which shows one solitary green spot on the ruined landscape. Another picture change zooms in to reveal that this is some type of forest oasis in the middle of the torched and shattered plains. The picture's source changes to that of a handheld camera, right at the border of the destroyed parts. The greenery appears to be some type of purifying force, greenish white tendrils in the ground filling into the desecrated land. The next couple pictures show the forest get thicker and thicker as it travels inwards, more and more wildlife becoming visible. It doesn't even feel like real wildlife, with everything just too perfect and idyllic. This is the type of place Greenpeace only wishes they could create.

Eventually, it gets to a center clearing, with a small island surrounded by some radiant water. The large Heartless is sitting down on the island, the Shadow style ones just swimming around. The bizarre part is that the sky, formerly a harsh yellow outside of the forest, is a perfect blue in here. The whole place just radiates this kind of calm to it, something that somehow comes across even through the thousands of pixels on the monitor. Kiko could lose herself in this place.

"I don't understand..." Sora trails off, something in the tone of his voice suggesting that something sacred has been destroyed.

"As you may have figured out," Uina continues, turning the monitor off, "I captured these Heartless. I still have about six dozen probes wandering around that oasis as they catalog its gradual decay. It breaks my heart to stop what appeared to be a fascinating project, but the planet is going to break up in about a month regardless of our involvement, anyway. You can't tell from these pictures, but while the planet shifts between -40 and 140 degrees celsiuis between the day and night sides, that area maintained a balmy 30 degrees at all times. Obviously, all of this is maintained by heavy magic of a sort of naturalistic type. There isn't any amount of soft science to explain this."

"How did you capture those?" Riku asks. Now there's a valid question that should expose him.

"It's bizarre," Uina explains, "I just walked in and all the nearby Shadow types just kind of watched me while maintaining a respectable distance. They didn't attack or anything. I walked right across the water and got way up close to the leader. It didn't even react to my scans or pictures. The next part really got me, though. As you know, my Heartless Trappers aren't anywhere effective enough to capture a leader. They just have too much willpower and are way too large to fit into the beam. But when I took one out and dropped it on the ground, the leader just broke itself down into some kind of liquid light and willingly went right in. Four of the Shadows did as well before the others just vanished into nothingness. It was like they figured out what I wanted and decided to obey."

"You commanded them?" Sora asks, sounding really suspicious.

"Oh, no, I didn't," Uina responds, "I'm still researching these fascinating specimens, of course, but that's not why we're here. As you know, we scheduled a Heartless hunt on Amaterasu III, or as I call it, 'the shopping planet'. In truth, while there are Heartless attacking on a regular basis, the planet is self-regulating with its own batch of heroes and the whole place is at a standstill. You've probably heard about it, although they call them 'oni' there, which really loosely translates to ogre or something. Don't ask me why, it's just the local vernacular and I guess none of the Interpedia editors ever made the connection. Anyway, the Heartless aren't why we're going there. Do any of you recognize this man?" Uina taps a few keys, bringing up a bus shot of a young red haired boy in a white and red outfit.

"That's... um... what's his name?" Sora asks.

"Yami Ryuko," Kiko chimes in.

"Okay, good," Uina continues, pulling out some printed papers from his desk, "I was worried I didn't get the right guy. I had a bunch of dead ends in my search over the past month, but I finally got this far. Anyway, he looks and sounds just like Kiko's description. His primary modus operandi consists of light based boomerangs and purifying things in pillars of light. He speaks in rambling speeches and talks a lot about justice."

"That's him," Kiko responds, "That's definitely him."

"Good," Uina says, handing out a file to Kiko, Sora, and Riku, "Forget about your old mission. I'll take care of the large Heartless of this world if I can even find it. Your new mission is to find out what you can about Mr. Ryuko. Walk around, talk to people, go to the public archives, whatever. If he is on the planet, track him down and convince him to come with you. Whatever means necessary. We can't afford to lose him when we have a revelation like this on our hands."

"How should we convince him to join us?" Riku asks.

"Simple," Uina responds, "He has an affection for women. A rather chaste one, but a magnetism, nonetheless. I'm splitting you up into two teams." Uina eyes Kiko a little, holding two fingers up as though to signal that he's thinking hard about this. "Sora and Kiko, you're team one. Everyone else, you're team two. I included suggestions for the women on how to approach him in the files. It was written for Kiko, though, so personalize it to fit. Any questions?"

"Yeah, um..." Kiko starts, trying and failing to think of a justification for her to go with Riku, "What are you building in here?"

"New machines utilizing the extract of these new Heartless," Uina responds, "Anyway, I'll see some of you later. Have a safe trip."


	39. It Came from Jamaica

"Where is she?" demands a gruesome figure in a raspy voice, holding a horrified man up by his neck.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" the man struggles to say, the grip around her throat harder than any metal he's ever encountered.

"Liar!" the figure yells, "You're another set of decoys trying to stop me from finding the empress! Where is she?!"

"I have no clue, I swear!" the terrified man responds, desperation going through him as he starts to see the end coming, "What more do you want?! You've already killed my family! My poor Lee-girl didn't do anything! She was five years old! Five! What kind of monste-" The man's tirade gets cut short along with his spinal structure as the figure effortlessly squeezes the bones into a fine mush.

"Useless," the figure remarks, effortlessly flinging the limp body aside. It's a sickening site of carnage in this humble apartment, burn marks and withering flames all over the light pinks and yellows of the floors and walls. Plush dolls and pastel colored furniture give a stark contrast to the two dead bodies, blood from both seeping into the carpet. The wall around a window is smashed in from the outside, a constant gush of wind rushing out of it as it carries all sorts of light objects out to a seventy story fall. In the middle of this room stands a man of about 6'3" dressed in white. His outfit appears to be some type of hard suit, lots of grime all over it from an untold amount of neglect. Patches of it appear to be torn off, singe marks around the edges. The helmet has a spherical dome shape to it, the bronze tinted glass of its visor smashed and remaining only as a few sharp pieces at the edges. Under the suit is a disfigured figure, his skin like a thick leather burned all the way through to the grain. Oozing pustules and dark rashes convene all over, some greenish liquid glistening all over. A permanent grimace is affixed on the face of this monstrosity, one of a pain at existence rather than a rage against the world.

"No kill like overkill, huh?" remarks a British sounding feminine voice from behind the figure.

"Who are you?!" the figure demands as he turns around with a weird type of non-grace, "Are you an agent of the empress?!"

"Of course not," the woman responds. While she is nowhere near the level of grotesque as the creature she's talking with, her black frayed cloak over sickly skin doesn't give her much to talk about. Beside her is a fairly buff blonde haired woman wearing a complex green outfit. She doesn't appear to be too happy here, an expression of worry on her face as she leans in to the cloaked woman.

"Should we really be here?" Mint whispers to the mistress.

"Just let me handle this, dear," the mistress responds as she walks towards the figure.

"What do you want?" the figure demands.

"I want whatever you want," the mistress responds, doing her best pandering voice, "But I must ask: why is someone as powerful as you using such incredible abilities to kill little girls? Isn't it a bit wasteful?"

"I have traveled through the depths of space and time itself," the figure suddenly begins with an unexpected shift in tone, "And what I saw was a madness beyond the depths of the human psyche. A whole universe, torn and aflame with the blistering rage of a thousand factions divided. Brothers and sisters take up arms as they fight to the bitter end, their cries of havoc filling the air as they destroy each other with a pungent hatred unlike anything ever inflicted. The streets of countless worlds run red with the blood of the innocent, creatures of pure black feeding upon the despair and growing ever more powerful for it. These same creatures will herald the end once their thirst for blood and bile is satiated, tearing apart the worlds from their very cores. Amongst all this chaos, I saw the events that would bring about the end of civilization. In a year's time, an unholy allegiance will be formed under a dark moon between the prince in yellow and the lady in black as they overthrow the king in red. Within all the chaos and despair, I saw a name, one of such vile wickedness and potent hatred, I dare not speak it."

"You need not overexert yourself," the mistress continues, "I'm after the empress as well. I needed to make sure you were on my side. She has agents and spies everywhere, but she would never reveal so much accurate information about herself to gain trust. You really did get the vision as well."

"I don't understand what you're talking about," the figure states.

"I've been gathering a contingent," the mistress explains, "One to defeat the Empress before she can rise to power. Even now, she is using your rampage to destroy the rebellion."

"My rampage?" the figure asks.

"The empress isn't stupid," the mistress continues, "She knows you're killing her decoys. She could have just had you killed after you got the first one, but she's using you now. Your sloppiness is killing her enemies in the process, bringing her closer to her goal. Kind of ironic, don't you agree? You are helping her and you don't even know it."

"That can't be true," the figure responds, "There's no way she could have found out so quickly. I masked my trail."

"I found you without a fraction of her resources," the mistress continues, "She could have taken the fight to you ages ago, but she decided to use you instead. That's what makes her the once and future empress."

"Dear lord," the figure starts, "You're right."

"Of course I am," the mistress responds, "I'm making an offer for you to join us. We have the resources necessary to track down and kill the empress and someone of your power would be an excellent addition to the team. What do you say?"

"I have no choice," the figure responds, "If the empress will find me before I can find her with my current plan, then I will join your group. Speed me towards her death, for every day we delay, the window grows smaller and the end of the universe becomes nigh."

"Of course," the mistress continues, "If we are to work together, we should know each other's names. My name is Maleficent and my companion is Mint, but we shall be called the mistress and the apprentice for security. And you are...?"

"My name is lost to the ages," the figure responds, "When the deities saw fit to bring me to this universe and show me the events that would lead to its end, they stripped me of my very identity in the process. Therefore, without a name, I am nothing more than an instrument of the gods, meant only to punish the empress for her future transgressions."

"But how shall I address you?" the mistress asks.

"Call me Cenari," the figure now named Cenari begins, "For I am the dead star, the supermassive black hole, the purifier of the cosmos-"

"Well, then, Cenari," the mistress interrupts, "Ready up your ship. We have much work to be done and as you said, not a lot of time to do it."

"As you wish, 'mistress'," Cenari responds, walking to the hole in the wall and hopping outside. No flight, no rockets, just jumping right down. After an awkward moment of silence, Mint decides to speak up on the issue.

"Did you just forge an alliance with that madman?" Mint asks, shocked, nay, outraged that the mistress would ever consider something like this, "I thought we were going to kill him."

"For the time being, yes, we're allied," the mistress starts, "He is no mere mortal. Whatever brought him to this universe twisted and distorted him beyond recognizability. We cannot be assured that he could be killed with what we have. Without his name, we cannot bind him. Therefore, we invite him into our circle. I tell you time and time again that you need to place your enemy closer to you than anybody else. You need to know them better than anyone or anything else that has ever existed. Better than your sister, better than your mother, better than even yourself. If you want to defeat your enemy, start by becoming them."

"Whatever," Mint responds, "I won't have anything to do with this freak. He doesn't even have a plan."

"There might be a kernel of truth in his insane rants," the mistress continues, "The future is a great unknown, but the storms of fate are brewing and a cataclysm is certain to happen within a year's time. The question is if we can decipher his message before it's too late."

"Why even bother?" Mint asks, "Why can't we just let him run his course? He'll probably find whoever this is and kill her."

"Because, my dear apprentice," the mistress continues, "I still want there to be a universe left when we conquer it."

"I'm not going anywhere near him," Mint states with authority.

"Just let me take care of him, dear," the mistress responds, "You still have a job to handle. I trust that you're ready?"

"Hell yeah, I am," Mint responds, getting quite enthusiastic as the prospect, "I've waited so long for a real assignment instead of this waiting around crap. I'm so happy that you think I'm ready to take on Riku."

"Of course you're ready," the mistress responds, "But remember that he is a formidable opponent and could defeat you if you are careless. Stick to the plan and Riku will fall. Don't do anything rash."

"Yes, mistress," Mint responds with a roll of her eyes, a black cloud enveloping her for a brief second as she vanishes into thin air.

**--**

Such a nice day in Radiant Garden like always. The sun is out, shining its warm rays upon the city with the grace of a benevolent deity. The temperature is just perfect, with the local sea and the shades of the buildings keeping it nice and cool. The soft scent of salt in the air is quite uplifting for the residents of this great town, reminding them of just how beautiful life really is. For Riku, it brings feelings of nostalgia and a longing for the good old days. Life used to be so simple, just lazing around the island and having fun with Sora and Kairi. Such carefree afternoons, all brought crashing down with the arrival of the Heartless. The past year and a half have heralded death, destruction, discord, and despair. Still, Riku has a new hope now and he wants to take advantage of it.

Jewelry shopping is a difficult chore for men. It just simply doesn't come so naturally for them, with everything just sort of appearing the same. A ruby is a garnet is a tourmaline is a beryl and they all just look the same to those with a Y chromosome. For some reason, one costs a lot more than the others, but why should it matter so much? Is a ruby suddenly more radiant because it costs ten times as much? Even the price is so hard to gauge. Everywhere has a different standard and they all have a different selection, so just because you like one piece doesn't mean another place will have anything like it. It's all so confusing to a young man like Riku, so he stops in the first place he sees.

"Hello, sir, and welcome to the house of gems," a friendly young lady in a retail blouse, vest, and slacks combination greets. Even the retail slaves around here are great. This place is supposed to be quite destitute, but it still has eight whole aisles and three shelves lining the walls. Every type of gem encompassing every possible color and cut is here, with metals ranging from stuff as mundane as sterling silver all the way up to top-of-the-line platinum. The only thing that doesn't seem posh about this place are the prices, with a healthy chunk of it being well within Riku's budget. A haven for an average guy like him.

"Hello," Riku responds, walking up to the nearby counter, "God, I'm so out of my depth here."

"Oh, don't be so hard on yourself," the retail girl starts as she gives a friendly chuckle, "Everyone needs to have a first time, after all. So, who are you shopping for?"

"An aquaintence," Riku explains, "I guess I feel like I've been kind of a jerk and I want to let her know that I care for her. Nothing too fancy, though."

"So, you..." retail girl trails off as the phone rings, "I'm sorry, I have to get that. It's probably the manager."

"It's okay," Riku responds.

"I'll be right back," retail girl says, skipping over to the phone on the other side of the room. As she talks about something involving supplies, Riku casually browses around the store to try to find something reasonable. Maybe a nice azurite-malachite necklace would be suiting for her, since she seems to like the blues and greens. Would be nice if it came in silver, but it must be out of stock or something. Riku can't afford gold or platinum of any type and that's all that's available with this gemstone in it. He'll just have to ask about it when the clerk finishes up on the phone. Maybe something with spectrolite would be fitting. It's a bit lighter, but she could use something like that. Would probably help her disposition a little in the process.

"Trying to find a gift for your girlfriend?" a female voice asks from behind.

"Oh, she's not my girlfriend," Riku responds, turning around. A neatly done up blonde woman in a business dress is standing there, a look of curiousity on her face.

"Ahh," the woman starts, "A hopeful, huh? Going to ask her out?"

"I don't know," Riku continues, "I just want to apologize for how I've acted. She's always been kind of... I don't know, frustrating. I try to help her, but she just ignores everything I say. She's so overbearing to everybody else all the time, arguing about everything. Yet, I feel kind of sorry for her. She doesn't seem to have any other friends she cares about, but she consciously avoids people. I think she's just kind of... I don't know, self-deprecating. She tries her best to look good around me and my friends, but it just feels like she's compensating for something. I just wish I could get through to her and get her to feel good about herself for who she is."

"That is interesting," the woman responds, "Do you love her?"

"What?" Riku asks.

"She loves you," the woman starts, "She might not seem like it, but she does. You're a good looking guy, so I can see why."

"It's not really love," Riku responds, "It's just this kind of lust, but not really. Maybe she thinks she loves me, but she just kind of just lets emotion guide her above reason. She tries to get me to acknowledge her, but she doesn't even try to let me know her better as a person so much as trying to convince me of her superiority as a vague feminine figure. She just constantly asks my opinions and gets me to talk while she just sort of stares at me with this look in her eyes. It's more like she's worshiping me or something. I don't quite understand it."

"Do you want to go out with her, though?" the woman asks.

"I just don't know," Riku responds, "I don't feel like I'd be doing her any favors by leading her on when I'm not really into it."

"In that case," the woman says in a knowledgable tone, "You should get her some chrysoprase."

"Chrysoprase?" Riku asks, completely baffled. Gemstone terminology is like a foreign language to him. Besides ruby, sapphire, emerald, and diamond, he doesn't really know any other terms.

"Oh, it's this green gem," the woman starts, "It's a pretty light color that has this milky gloss to it. It's in good taste and not too fancy, so it wouldn't offend her or send the wrong message. It would be perfect."

"You think so?" Riku asks. The woman keeps up her wide smile as she reaches under her collar, pulling out a necklace with a decent sized oval stone.

"It's the perfect stone for any occasion," the woman continues, "And unlike many of the expensive gems, it can be perfectly smoothed out. See?"

"I'm not sure why that's important," Riku admits as he looks at it pretty close.

"Come on, touch it," the woman says, gently tugging his hand up to the gem. Suddenly, Riku gets a spike in his extra-sensory perception. He feels this kind of odd power about her, one that gives sort of a mixture of pride and hubris, yet with sort of a sadness underscoring it. Definitely not a normal person. One tiny morsel finally reaches the top processing level of his brain, that of a distinct emptiness. Riku would recognize it anywhere and knows how dire it is to sense in a person.

"What are you planning?" Riku asks, not looking up from the gem.

"I don't know what-" the woman responds. Riku shoves her away, taking a few steps back himself.

"You're a Heartless summoner," Riku starts, "And you have a group under your command right now. What are you trying to do?"

"Heartless summoner? Me?" the woman asks, motioning to herself with her hands. She tries to stifle her chuckle, but it proves too much. With the charade broken, she grabs a shoulder corner of the dress and tears at it. As the top comes off, her outfit shifts back to a set of gem embedded greens, her hair sprouting to a longer length in an instant.

"So, you show yourself," Riku muses in a cynical tone, "How fun. What do you want from me? The pride of defeating one of the legendary heroes?"

"Oh, nothing much," the woman in green starts, "Just your fancy sword."

"Maleficent's stooge, huh?" Riku asks.

"Sorry about the wait," says the retail girl as she walks up to the two, "Are you two here together?"

Riku realizes that if this mysterious girl is a Heartless summoner, it's just a matter of course that she's going to bring something out. In a closed area with a lot of obstacles like this, it would be difficult to protect the innocent bystander. Making a snap decision, he does a tackle grapple on the retail girl and starts running to the door with her over his shoulder.

"Hey!" the girl shouts, "Let me go! Help!" As Riku nears the door, the green woman casually pounds down on a display case, shattering the glass. Loud sirens pierce the room, the normal flourescant fixtures turning off as a set of red lights illuminate the area. A bar grate drops down from the ceiling right on top of the door, blocking Riku inside.

"Oh, you're not getting away so easy!" the woman in green says, laughing heartily at this turn of events. As Riku considers his options, he's taken off-guard as the clerk elbows him in the back of his head. Stunned, Riku lets go of her and promptly receives a knee in the groin that brings him down to his knees. The girl shoves him down onto his back with both of her hands, stomping on his chest with her loafers a few times before running away. The woman in green stops laughing, apparently finding this turn of events not to be even funnier.

"Geez, you gave the mistress a problem?" the woman asks, outstretching her right arm in front of her as she closes her eyes, "I thought this was going to be hard. What a freaking liar. Come to me!"

As Riku recovers from the desparate blows of the surprisingly vicious girl, he sees a black inkiness start forming all over the floor. Shadows and Soldiers start popping up, going into their usual vacant ready stances. Two of the center aisles burst into pieces as a large Heartless starts rising from underneath. It looks kind of like a creature made out of black lightning, jagged edges and zig zags comprising its form. Highlights of a red, yellow, and green stripe pattern are on its chest, wrists, and ankles, giving it this kind of weird look. The one part of its body not zig-zagged and sharply angled is the head, with hair that appers to be a set of dreadlocks randomly sprouting all over. On its chest is some type of machine with two vials of some magenta liquid pumping through an intrevenous system. Quite a bizarre image.

Riku summons his keyblade, taking a ready stance as the Shadows and Soldiers suddenly start rushing. To someone like Riku, these aren't even a blip on the radar. Just do crescent swings and spins and they won't even get close. Mowing down the lesser Heartless, Riku does a running jump towards the giant Heartless. With a sudden and unexpectant flash, a dark purple light comes out of a barely visible black gem embedded in the forehead and holds Riku in mid-air. Riku gets a feeling of being painfully torn asunder, his keyblade drifting away from him as a visible energy string between them grows thin.

"Thank you for cooperating," the woman says, yanking the keyblade away. With a casual flicking snap of her fingers, a dark cloud washes over her as she vanishes. The large Heartless stops with the beam, dropping Riku back onto the floor. Not even a second later, a dozen Shadows and Soldiers all jump on top with the grace of a football pile-up.


	40. Plausible Deniability

Emily wakes up with a gasp, her bed drenched in a cold sweat. Not just one dream of horror from what has to be real life, but two of even greater intensity graced her mind tonight. So much pain and suffering inflicted upon her poor Riku in the patently ridiculous name of conquering the universe. What does Maleficent even want to do with it should she succeed? It's just stupid. She'll just have to stop the future again like last time, of course. A passing glance at the alarm clock reveals the time to be 4:42, making it a bit earlier than she prefers, but whatever. More time to just stand in the warm shower and enjoy herself as she psyches up. Emily slides out of bed, unlacing her nightgown and letting it fall to the ground as she walks to the bathroom.

Emily is going to need a plan if she wants to stop this horrible future. It's probably going to be today that Riku goes out, since there were posters showing the grand opening of a play scheduled for today. The city is pretty good about clearing out posters after their expiration date, so while one or two might get by, the couple dozen certainly wouldn't. As for the question of what time, she vaguely recalls a clock in the shop showing it to be around 17:43. It's a good thing that Emily's dream recall clears up enough to help her get information when she needs it, but now she needs to think of how she'll do this. Regardless of anything, Riku just shouldn't be anywhere near this mess. It would be a crying shame for something to go wrong and Riku to be caught in the crossfire anyway. He should probably be diverted to somewhere safe, but in a way that won't attract suspicion. She'll also have to somehow get some weapons as well, since her 'kung fu' is quite weak and there's no telling what type of abilities Mint has. She can probably bug Uina about this, but she should be careful in how she does it. She doesn't want this information to leak out and potentially prevent the enemy from even showing up.

Now fully clean and relaxed, Emily walks to the closest and picks out her outfit for the day. If she's going to be fighting, she should probably wear something tight without restricting movement. The best bet is probably to go for the dark blue mesh outfit she came into the world wearing. The repairs on it that Uina's seamstress bots performed have been sort of iffy, but even then, it's still the best thing she has. As for the brooch, it's probably best if she uses the armlet adaption. Keeps it secure, hidden, and unlikely to be lost. The discussion about binding people through their true names only reassured the paranoia. A simple snap into the slot and a slide up the arm later, Kiko slips into her outfit and heads for the door.

**--**

It's another boring day at the dining hall today, with its usual mundane opulence barely registering. Kiko is a little early today, knowing full well that the faculty has their food on a separate schedule to avoid lowering the mood and also to have their daily secret meeting. How they find enough stuff to talk about on a daily basis is beyond her, but it's still what happens. Everybody is sitting at a table only one space away from the center buffet, just kind of chilling out at they munch on stuff. What comes as a bit of a surprise is King Mickey sitting at the head of the table. He's never around from what Kiko has seen and it's just bizarre to finally see him for the first time since opening day. As she walks towards the table, she gets a bit of an expected but unusually harsh response.

"What in the name of Yevon do you think you're doing, Butch?!" drill sergeant Williams shouts loudly. Well, if somebody is going to chastise her, it may as well be her ward.

"Well, um-" Kiko attempts to counter.

"Have you forgotten my name, maggot?!" Williams interrupts.

"But-" Kiko tries again, forgetting about the naming again.

"You know the rules!" Williams shouts, getting up, "All you bottom feeding maggots must wait until 5:30 before entering!"

"...Sir, but I-" Kiko futilely attempts.

"Go on, get out!" Williams shouts, moving in to force Kiko away.

"I'll handle this," Uina speaks up in a soft tone, showing barely a passing interest in the events. He's just kind of looking into his tea cup, not even bothering to acknowledge the people around him.

"You know about this?" Williams asks in a significantly calmer but still disrespectful tone.

"I asked her to see me today," Uina continues, putting the cup down as he rises out of his chair, "I thought she'd come during my office hours, though. I guess I expected more tact than to intrude on our morning meeting, but I guess not. I'll take her outside."

"Do what you want," Williams says, sitting back down, "I'll see _you_ at basic training, Butch." Kiko walks alongside Uina as the table watches both of them head towards the door. As they exit, Uina loses a little of his calm.

"What in the hell do you think you're doing?" Uina asks in a stern tone.

"I need a gun," Kiko responds, flatly and directly. May as well just cut straight to the chase, since nothing but the truth will soften the impact of the question.

"...what do you need a gun for?" Uina asks, sounding a bit perturbed.

"Riku is going to be attacked today," Kiko starts, "I saw it in a dream. I need a handgun, something I can hide under my shirt in my pants."

"So you had a bad dream," Uina starts, "Big deal. I have bad dreams all the time, most of them involving my old family and friends. I think I've seen my own funeral in the real world over a hundred times now. They're so common that they don't even register any more. If you really need counseling, why don't you get Professor Kern to exorcise your inner demons instead of resorting to suicide like some weak-minded wimp?"

"I can see the future sometimes," Kiko responds, "That's how I stopped Riku from being killed before. It's how I got in this school in the first place. Did you forget already?"

"Now that you mention it," Uina starts, a bit of calm creeping back in, "I remember now. I guess it's easy to forget, since you're not actually training in it. Still, it would be very irresponsible for me to give you a gun. Just tell me when and where Riku is going to be attacked and I'll take care of it myself."

"No," Kiko starts, "It won't work if I tell you. They'll just withdraw for today and come back some other day."

"Do you really give me that little credit?" Uina asks in a vaguely insulted tone, "I can keep a secret better than anybody and I can hold my own in a fight. My Force Baton Mark VI is within the top one percentile of most potent weapons."

"I'm the only one that would recognize her well enough," Kiko responds, trying to figure out a way to keep him distanced, "I have to go alone. If I'm seen with somebody else, she might get suspicious and leave. We'd just look weird together and she'd figure out something is wrong before even showing herself."

"You put me in a hard position," Uina responds, "You're not a real, active precog. You're just a passive vessel and only receive information that the spirits consider important to tell you. Because of that, you aren't a reliable source of information and I can't authorize a plan like this. Certainly not behind the backs of the rest of the administration like you're trying to get me to do. However, you have proven yourself to get good information in the past and losing Riku would be a crippling blow to our organization. This is a hard decision, indeed."

"So you'll do it?" Kiko asks, hopeful.

"I can't," Uina says, his tone going a little too fast towards disapproval, "Look, you had a bad dream and I can empathize, but I can't just give out a gun to the lowest ranked student of only five weeks experience. It's against the rules and as a best case scenario, we'd both be in deep crap. Riku is a very powerful warrior and it's just unreasonable to believe that he can't take care of himself. If you want some actual help with your premonition, then tell me about it later."

"But-" Kiko tries to say, stopping as Uina brushes past her rudely. Isn't that gratitude for all she's doing for him? She gets ready to protest when she realizes that something dropped in her pocket. He's probably just acting this out to deflect suspicion, but it seems kind of weird when he's really the one in control of all the machines in the school. Is he really concerned that somebody is going to eavesdrop through the keyhole? Less than a minute later, the other teachers leave through the big double doors. King Mickey isn't amongst them, which just seems sort of weird. Why would he leave through a side exit? Does he not want to be seen by anybody? He did promise to see every student by the end of their tenure, so why should he avoid everybody now? After all the teachers pass by and gain a good distance, Kiko pulls a note out from her pocket.

At the main gate on the inside, look for where the the left side of the center pillar meets the ground. From that fractured tile, go two towards you and three to the right. Pick up the loose cobblestone to find a cubby hole holding a shoebox. I will leave a single gun of my design based around your handguns inside of the box. Take the gun, leave the box, and put the cobblestone back just as you found it. You have to take full responsibility for its use and I will not cover for you or even confirm any knowledge of your plans should you be discovered. As far as the school records are concerned, that gun is stolen. You will have twenty one bullets. Make them count.

"Hey, Kiko," Riku says from behind, giving Kiko a mild shock, "You're kind of early."

"Yeah," Kiko responds, hastily stuffing the note back in her pocket and looking around to find nobody else worth noticing in audible range, "Can I talk to you alone?"

"Hmm?" Riku responds. There seems to be a bit of a surprise in his reaction, one of a more mild, pleasing variant than just the pure unexpected variety.

"I just have something I want to talk to you about," Kiko starts, searching for a way around the issue, "Please?"

"Sure," Riku says, "But only for a little."

"Thank you," Kiko responds. The two of them walk inside of the hall, a flurry of robots cleaning the one table and setting the larger scale buffet with lots of already prepared food. Just like clockwork, Kiko goes into auto-pilot as she follows Riku around, grabbing her usual choice of bread, red stuff, white stuff, and a cup of blue stuff. Riku leads them all the way to the other edge completely opposite of the main doors, placing his tray down at the end of a table and taking a seat. Kiko takes the position opposite of him, leaning back a little in her chair as she thinks of an approach. He needs to simply not leave the castle at all. It's probably best if Kiko tries to immitate him, since she's about the same height and a similar build. It will require a lot of painful breast binding due to the C-cups of justice, but if it's required to save him, so be it.

"Kiko?" Riku asks in a bid to get her attention.

"Hmm?" Kiko responds, realizing that she has to execute a plan soon or forever hold her peace. Nothing is more suspicious than stalling.

"You wanted to talk to me alone?" Riku asks.

"Yeah," Kiko says, deciding upon an approach, "Greg and Danielle want to do some stuff after dinner."

"Really?" Riku asks, sounding quite curious.

"Yeah," Kiko starts, "They wanted to play videogames with you or something."

"I kind of wanted to take care of some shopping, though," Riku responds. Well, that certainly proves the date.

"They said it wouldn't take long," Kiko continues, "They just want you in the arcade around 17:40."

"Kiko," Riku says, lowering his eyelids a little as he looks at Kiko with a suspicious glance.

"Huh?" Kiko responds.

"Could you be more transparent?" Riku asks in a cynical tone.

"What do you mean?" Kiko asks, going into damage control.

"I can tell you're planning something," Riku responds, "Your excuse really, really needs work, though. Is that the best you can come up with? I already know that you're not on speaking terms with Greg or Danielle. They asked me the other day why you avoid them."

"But..." Kiko trails off, unable to think of a path. Game over. Better just try to appeal to his emotions instead of tricking him.

"I'll go to the arcade at that time if you want me to," Riku starts, taking Kiko by surprise, "There won't be much surprise, but if it means that much to you, sure. I'll play along. I'm looking forward to it."

"Thank you," Kiko responds. Well, that was easier than expected.

"Let's go join Sora and Kairi," Riku offers.

**--**

Another uneventful day transpires, its actions just as labored as expected. Sergeant Williams was a bit mean, but it wasn't really anything too exceptional. He's always using her as a punching bag to begin with, so all he could do was start the punishment a tad earlier. Proof that she couldn't possibly do a fight with just pure martial arts alone, certainly. True to Uina's word, Kiko can't check out any more blue programs. The system even brings up a big red flashing box scolding her when she even tries to bring up the top page of any of them. It's a real disappointment because she really likes the Daydream Believer program. It was good inspiration on how to talk in a gentle, pure manner and it was just unnecessary of Uina to destroy all her notes like that. She has nothing but her memories to go by and those are notoriously unreliable when it comes to the finer points of language. Regardless, she found this nice purple program to use. It's in the style of an open-ended RPG, so even though she's supposed to just kill stuff and explore dungeons, she's able to use it to explore the intimate lives of the NPCs. Surely, it doesn't count if she plays a male avatar since men and women are different and it isn't physically involving her.

It's a fortunate thing that handgun training fell on today. Knowing that it's going to be a major deciding factor in a few hours, Kiko put her all into it and really got some results. Not quite enough to get the teacher to like her, but one good session after four crappy ones isn't quite a big enough turnaround for that. With all of the expected day's activities taken care of, Kiko makes a quick dash back to her room. She only has little under an hour and a half to get her disguise ready and get to the jewelry shop. No time to lose, certainly. After a quick browse of the clothing selection shows only a black leather jacket and some heavy blue jeans as easily mistakable for male clothing, it just kind of chooses itself. A quick unbind of Riku's picture from the black binder, a grab of some duct tape from the top shelf, and a swing by the bathroom to pick up the practice-at-home disguise kit for Stealth Training prepares her for the first stage.

Kiko rushes through the halls at a brisk pace, doing her best to avoid raising suspicion from the other students. She's going to need to take out a training program on disguises due to her lack of confidence in getting it right by herself. It might not hold up under scrutiny, but she needs it to be good enough for Mint to fall for it. Lucky for her, the General Disguise Trainer is a bottom tier program, so it shouldn't raise too much suspicion to take it out and should offer the features needed. Grabbing the disk and skipping the tiara, Kiko reserves the nearest room and rushes in. After the usual ritual, the program begins by manifesting a blocky, non-descript androgynous figure.

"Hello and welcome to the General Disguise Trainer," the figure starts, "How may I help you in your studies today?"

"I want to be disguised as this individual," Kiko orders, holding the picture and suitcase of materials up, "It must be with these materials and done as fast as possible. It only has to work when seen from about ten or more meters away."

"That is an unusually specific and complex request," the figure responds, "Are you sure you don't wish to start with something simpler? Perhaps just disguise yourself as a male version of yourself?"

"Just do it," Kiko responds.

"As you wish," the program responds.

**--**

With the disguise set, Kiko as a barely passable imitation of Riku runs through the hallways. The elevator proves to be a snag as always, but it just gives her a chance to catch her breath. This is going to be tense. Given the timing, she's probably only just barely going to make it to the jewelry shop in time for her vision, so it's important to be ready. The best course of action is probably to lead Mint on without turning for at least two lines before just doing a quick draw and cap to the head. Should be effective, since for all the magic there is in the universe, few things can survive a bullet to the brain. As the elevator stops at the bottom, Kiko jumps through and runs down the long hallway. Back through the front hall with its grand staircase and she's out in the front courtyard. It takes Kiko a little to figure out how the instructions should be followed, but she eventually finds that loose cobblestone. Just as expected, there's a shoebox with a pistol.

The gun is actually a bit of a surprise to Kiko, being made out of intermixed panels of brass and black steel. It has the same basic shape as her handguns right down to the grooves, but it has this kind of vaguely pearl-like overlay on its grip. Probably a machine of some kind to enhance it or whatever, since Uina is the big techno-wizard or some crap. Grabbing the gun, some bright orange lights pierce through Kiko's hand painlessly as one primary beam goes back and forth. After a few seconds, it blinks green before shutting off. Probably something attune to her or whatever. Hopefully, it won't get in the way. Kiko lifts up her jacket and slides the gun in her pants above her butt. After some more preparation and a quick adjustment of her clothes to get the best combination of accessibility to her gun without having it be too revealing, Kiko feels confident enough to walk out of the gate. Time to save Riku.


	41. Quartz Can Do Anything

With her disguise set, Kiko walks through the town towards the jewelry shop. It's time to restore the status quo and prevent a truly horrifying future. She feels a type of fear, not so much of her ability to pull this off but of the unknown variables. What, exactly, is Mint's shtick, anyway? Something was said about her 'almost destroying herself', but that doesn't make much sense. Destroy herself how? All she has done is use the Corridors of Darkness, disguise herself, and summon the Heartless. Doesn't exactly seem so self-destructive to her and she looked more than healthy. Maybe she has super strength or something, but the most strenuous thing Kiko has seen so far was the breaking of that glass. However, she does look fairly well-built, so it doesn't seem that unreasonable to expect. This unknown factor is worrisome, but she does seem quite human. Shouldn't be too hard, in any case.

The key here is the plan. Kiko's disguise is convincing from a far enough distance, so all she really has to do is walk out Riku's approximate path and wait for Mint to approach her. Hopefully, the point where Mint started watching was after the gate, but that's just the risk with any diversion of the timeline. It's not like she could have gotten Uina to put the gun somewhere further out of sight. It was fortuitous enough as it is to even get one in the first place. Regardless, she'll probably open with the same question, but it would be careless to attack right away. It would be a total disaster if Kiko's alterations to the future lead to an entirely innocent person asking the same question and being killed as a result. Then she'd have a manslaughter charge and spend the rest of her youth in prison. No, she has to confirm that it's Mint beyond a shadow of doubt. Play along for at least four lines before breaking out the gun or wait for recognition that she is, quite specifically, not Riku. Shouldn't be too hard.

After stalling for a little time on the sidewalk, Kiko walks right into the shop. It looks pretty much just as Kiko remembers it, with the same girl working the counter. Show time.

"Hello, sir, and welcome to the house of gems," the clerk says in the same obligatory friendliness expected of retail slaves.

"Hello," Kiko says, suddenly realizing that her voice probably still sounds too feminine. She does a fake cough before shifting towards her baritone range. "God, I'm out of my depth here."

"Oh, don't be so hard on yourself," the retail girl starts as she gives a friendly chuckle, looking at Kiko a bit suspiciously, "Everyone needs to have a first time, after all. So, what are you shopping for?"

"An acquaintance," Kiko explains, trying her best to avoid the whisper range, "I've been kind of a jerk to her and I want her to know that I care about her. Nothing too fancy."

"So, you're after this girl but you're not sure if..." retail girl trails off as the phone rings, "I'm sorry, I have to get that. It's probably the manager."

"It's okay," Kiko responds, realizing that she really screwed this up big time. Not very graceful with that opening there.

"I'll be right back," the retail girl says, skipping over to the phone just like the vision. Well, impersonations aren't Kiko's strong suit, but that seemed to be pretty good. The dialogue might be a little different, but it didn't imply anything to drive Mint away. The timeline isn't really _that_ finicky and she's followed it pretty well. Kiko walks over to around where she thought Riku was in her vision. The multi-color gems all seem to be at this nearby counter, which meshes with Riku's inability to see the door. After a short bit, Kiko hears the door close behind her with the jangle of those retail bells. Kiko tenses up with anticipation as she wonders about the person behind her. She's going to have to shoot Mint at point blank range right in the head. Not exactly easy to do even with the shock of the first kill behind her, but it's either her or Riku. It takes a little too long before Kiko hears a sigh and a flap of cloth.

"Where's the real Riku?" a familiar voice says in an irritated tone. Kiko does a slow turn to find Mint standing there in that green outfit, her arms crossed and a look of impatience on her face. Finally, a face to face meeting with the person of Kiko's unfortunate dreams. She doesn't quite look as imposing up close as she did in all the visions, appearing more as a boxer than a lightweight body-builder. Maybe the visions have been lying to her?

"How could you-" Kiko asks, slipping up on her voice. She makes a note to herself to ask for vocal lessons when she gets back.

"I'm a girl," Mint says in a condescending tone, "I can tell who the other girls are. Even that corporate shill saw through your disguise. What do you think I am, stupid?"

"Sort of, yeah," Kiko admits. Why even bothering to be polite? Mint doesn't seem like the type to return any respect. Kiko feels a bit hesitant to pull the gun out right away, that same fear of the unknown gripping over her. It would take about half a second to do a quick draw to shoot, but Mint's speed is up in the air. She needs something needs to distract her, but the question is what?

"How the hell did Riku find out about this?" Mint asks, her stare piercing right through Kiko, "There were only two people in the universe that knew about this plan and there's no way the mistress would talk."

"Well... um... I... um..." Kiko stutters, figuring out an approach, "I've been dreaming about you."

"Oh?" Mint asks, now a bit confused. As Kiko learned, the two best emotions you can provoke in your opponent are confusion and anger. The former leads to vapid uncertainty while the latter goes towards compulsiveness. A rational thinking person can exploit both to maximum effect.

"Yeah," Kiko continues, doing her best at a tone of admiration, "I see you in my dreams every night. You're just so great and I knew that the spirits were telling me that you're the one for me. You're so perfect for me in every way and I just wanted to meet you so I could declare my love for you. You are the shining-"

"Pffffffffff..." Mint interrupts, rolling her eyes as she turns a bit. An improvement, but not much of one. She's definitely using her peripheral vision if she's worth being Maleficent's apprentice.

"Sorry about the wait," says the retail girl as she walks up to the two, "Are you two here together? Not that there's anything wrong-"

"Does it look like we're here tog-" Mint interrupts in a very harsh tone, focusing her full attention on the clerk. Now's the chance. Kiko draws her gun with the speed of a cheetah, adopting the Weaver stance and closing her eyes as she fires a shot into Mint's head. She hears the shrill scream of the retail girl, scuffling on the ground as she runs away. Well, there's certainly no turning back now. Kiko finally killed somebody on her own free will. That insane woman doesn't really count, since she's been killed some untold number of times before and wasn't really a person any more. Of course, the Heartless don't count, obviously. They're just these brainless beasts and probably not even aware of their own existence. Mint had a personality, aspirations, and purpose in life. Maybe she was evil and going to kill Riku, but this just seems like an unnecessary execution. Kiko realizes that she really is a horrible person if she is willing to kill someone instead of arresting and reforming them.

Kiko eventually gains enough courage to open her eyes, finding a very unusual sight before her. Mint is decidedly not dead, but instead has this green crystalline substance spiraling around her. Her arms still crossed, this substance is stemming from the bracelet and arching randomly towards a spot right in front of her forehead. There's a small dimple in this structure near the end, with a tiny chunk of metal still heated to a shade of reddish white inside. From behind the bullets, Mint is staring at Kiko with the half-open eyelids of disapproval as she gives a soft sigh.

"You're new to this, aren't you?" Mint asks in a condescending tone, moving her arm through the dissipating crystal and catching the bullet as it falls, "Some seer you are. You don't even know my abilities. Why do I never find any worthy opponents?"

Kiko stands there, dumbstruck. What the hell just happened? This makes no sense whatsoever. A bullet travels at a speed of up to 1200 meters a second. Kiko isn't even a hundredth that distance away. As far as everything is concerned, that shot should have killed Mint instantly. What kind of monster is this? Does she have super speed or something? Panic setting in, Kiko starts firing the gun randomly. One, two, three, four, five shots all travel through the air, each one greeted by a tendril of green crystal in instant bright flashes. As Kiko starts to calm down, Mint makes that irritating tsk sound as she stares intently at her opponent.

"You really are stupid, aren't you?" Mint exclaims, "Do you really think that it's going to magically start working if you just keep shooting more bullets at me? Well, you've really pissed me off. My turn!"

Mints eyes start glowing green as the crystalline structures all merge back together, forming into some type of single-sided blade. It still stems from the bracelet, wrapping itself around her wrist before becoming a handle in her hands. Mint does a lateral swing in a smooth but not terribly fast manner, giving Kiko enough time to just barely duck underneath. With Mint wide open, Kiko takes two more shots at her head that get caught by two more tendrils. Mint gives an irritated grunt before making a surprisingly fast retract and thrust, Kiko just barely evading to the side as it cuts right through her jacket. Knowing now that a head on attack with bullets isn't going to work, Kiko makes a dash for it. Just barely managing to get out of range before a slice could land on her back, she runs towards the back of the shop.

"Pitiful," Mint remarks, "Absolutely pitiful."

A flash goes by Kiko's eyes, signalling the usual. Some sharp, heavy object stabs right through Kiko's back, emerging on the other side in a messy display as another flash brings her back to the present. Kiko dives into a somersault, feeling something slice right through the back of her jacket before she hits the ground. As she rises back up, she sees some very jagged rod of green crystal collide with the display glass. As both shatter into a million pieces, the overhead lights shift to red and the grates slide down on all the doors. Well, there goes the potential for escape. Wonderful. Kiko turns around to find Mint walking slowly, her right arm held in a diagonal in front with a clench fist. Kiko takes the opportunity to start running to her left, allowing the jacket to fall off as she stretches her arms behind.

"So much for the plan," Mint remarks, the sound of something tearing through the ground rushing towards Kiko. She does a jump over the nearby counter, tripping on the edge as it gets bent upwards from the force of something. She falls flat on her face, something cutting into her skin. Kiko pushes herself up, recoiling in pain from more cuts. Apparently, this is not safety glass in the display cases. Well, she needs a new plan now, something that takes this new revelation into account. While bullets to the front aren't working, maybe bullets to the back will? It's as good a plan as any. Kiko glances just over the line of the broken case, finding Mint sitting on another while looking through the jewelry.

"Let's get to know each other better," Mint offers, "My name is Mint in case you didn't see that in your 'dreams'. What's your's?"

Kiko ignores this question as she holsters her gun, peels off the face make-up, and rips her wig off. With that messy stuff out of the way, she takes a piece of glass and carefully slices the duct tape keeping her chest in check before sliding the overlapping pants off. No real point in having more layers than necessary, plus she needs something to protect her hands from all the glass. She needs to figure out a way to crawl around behind Mint. She does seem to regard Kiko as being barely even worth noticing, so it shouldn't be too hard. Kiko uses the glass to cut off two swaths from the jeans and wraps them around her hands. Should be sufficient. She starts crawling slowly, trying her best not to crinkle the glass as she get away from the patch. This was a really, really stupid plan. She should have just let Uina handle it, but it's too late for that now. She got herself in this situation and she's going to have to get herself out. There's silence for a tense minute as Kiko crawls around the bend near the door and starts heading towards the other wall.

"What, dead already?" Mint asks, "I was barely even playing with you. Why does the mistress keep sending me after these unworthy opponents? Does she give me this little credit?"

Kiko turns the bend, letting go of the pants pieces and drawing her gun. Not too much further to get a clean shot at the back of the head. As Kiko gets in position, she takes a deep breath. This is it. She jumps up and takes a shot at Mint's head, managing to keep her eyes open this time. Once again, the bullet gets caught by the crystalline structure, not even getting any closer this time than any of the previous attempts. Mint turns around slowly with an irritated expression on her face.

"What part of 'immune to bullets' didn't get through?" Mint asks, her eyes glowing green from something, "I spent two months strapped to a table deflecting everything. I don't even have to think about it any more. When will you learn, dammit?"

Another flash goes by Kiko's eyes, this time with several green crystals puncturing her from behind. Another flash brings Kiko back to the present, an instinctive dodge to the right just barely evading the attack. She trips to the ground from green crystal wrapping around her feet, quickly encasing itself up her legs as it lifts her up. Kiko notices the green crystal stemming from the chrysoprase jewelry of the shop, but before she can take any action, a spike knocks the gun out of her hand. The crystal wraps itself around her arms, holding her in place as Mint walks over.

"Silly girl," Mint starts, chuckling, "Is that the best you can do? Just keep trying to shoot me?"

"How are you doing this?" Kiko asks.

"I'm magic," Mint responds, getting right up close to Kiko, "That's why. God, you're pitiful. What are you, a really stupid psychic? There's no way you could have avoided all that with your pitiful skills."

"Are you going to kill me now?" Kiko asks, trying to make herself sound deluded and over-confidant rather than scared crapless. Only way she's getting out alive is if she somehow appeals to Mint's apparent desire for a real opponent.

"Oh, I'm not going to kill you," Mint responds, laughing, "I'm not that tasteless. Oh, no. I won't let you forget me so easily, though. Death is too easy and I won't get any reputation if I kill everybody, after all. I want you to tell everybody you meet about me. Tell them I trounced you. Tell them I made you scream for mercy."

"What are you-" Kiko tries to ask, getting muffled by Mint's hand.

"Shhhhh," Mint starts, "I think I figured out what really bothers you. When you were acting like you loved me, you sounded really uncomfortable. Are you afraid of other girls or something?"

"Mmmmfff," Kiko tries to shout, realizing that this is not going in a direction she likes. Mint starts running her hand over Kiko's midsection as she lightly kisses her neck. Just as Kiko starts to feel a huge amount of panic set in, Mint suddenly jumps backwards as a swarm of energy balls travel right past from above.

"Leave the girl alone," a familiar voice commands from out of sight.

"Who the hell are you?" Mint asks, looking somewhere above and to the right of Kiko.

"My name is Uina," the new challenger states. Nice of him to show up at such a convenient time.

"Uina?" Mint asks, "Grandmaster Uina?"

"None other," Uina responds, "Let the girl go. She doesn't know what she's doing."

"Well, obviously," Mint retorts, "But how did you figure out we're here?"

"Who do you think invented that gun?" Uina remarks, "I will admit, it was pretty clever of you to destroy the local area network connection. It's going to take a while for the police to show up and get inside. Regardless, I shall be your opponent."

"I hope you're better than this loser," Mint responds in an sadistically optimistic tone, launching Kiko back towards a wall. Uina drops down from his perch, landing a good forty meters away from Mint and assuming a ready position. He's wearing this form fitting grey flak jacket, with matching pants and a pair of thick goggles over his eyes. In his right hand is that same clockwork rod, glowing with some gold radiance. The two stare at each other for a while, sizing each other up as they plot their first moves. Kiko isn't quite sure of Uina's capabilities, knowing that he does certainly seem to be able to generate flames, stun from up close, and send out balls of explosions. He should be able to win this easily, since it seems that all Mint can do is generate that green stuff.

Suddenly, Uina makes the first move with a swing of the rod. A couple more orange balls of energy fly out, heading straight towards Mint. All the gems in her boots sprout the green crystal, saturating through the ground and rising into pillars to catch each of the spheres. The explosions completely shatter the crystal, each one pushing back further towards Mint. With nowhere to go, Mint dodges to the side just barely in time to avoid being splattered by the last sphere. The crystal slick shatters as she starts forming a new one, traveling along it at an impressive speed. Mint forms a ball of green crystal in her hand stemming from the bracelet, pulling her arm back and making a throwing motion. As the ball reaches the front, it explodes into over a dozen sharp spikes all heading on the same course. Uina dodges by making a leaping stride to a side, readying his rod for another attack.

Meanwhile, Kiko just sits there and thinks of what a failure she is. Once again, she has proven just why she's worthless for not having any magic. Some good she is as 'the best natural human' and all she can do is get her ass kicked by some apprentice. She really should just leave the school. It's supposed to be for incredible people, not just a babysitting service for Kiko to keep her out of jail. It really makes her mad to see just how useless she really is when she passed judgment on so many other people. For all their self-esteem issues, neither Chou nor Kairi have ever been singled out for their lack of competence. Ever. It's sobering to think that even they are better than her.

"I'm so happy you came!" Mint shouts in a jovial tone, dodging some type of gold laser beam, "It's been so long since I've had a real fight!"

Kiko comes to a conclusion. Her gun is still nearby somewhere amidst all the broken glass and spilled jewelry. She should still try to fight back even if it's pointless just to prove to Uina that she tried. There has to be a limit to the amount of energy that Mint can draw. Sora said something about there being a threshold for magic and there's no reason to believe that someone as unnotable as Mint wouldn't have one at a relatively low level. Kiko runs over to the pile of debris, starting to search through it. The gun has to be somewhere inside, but each necklace, brooch, and bracelet she turns over only adds to her frustration. She could have sworn her gun was knocked in this direction.

Suddenly, Kiko notices something in a broken display shelf near her. It appears to be some type of sword made entirely out of white crystals, its blade polished to a perfect clarity. Under the tiny spotlights of the case, it gives off this radiant glow. Sensing some intertwined fate in it, Kiko grabs it to feel... nothing. It's just a sword, albeit a weirdly made one that is probably merely ornamental. Well, it's better than nothing and the gun hasn't been working, so why not? Kiko is pretty much immune to death anyway so long as she has her precognition, so she may as well take the chance. As Mint starts passing by in her circular path, Kiko jumps out with the sword ready behind her.

"Oh, please," Mint remarks, creating a wall of crystal between her and Uina as she materializes a blade in her hand. Kiko tries to do an upwards slice, but gets parried with an effortless horizontal slash. The force of the impact launches Kiko right back into the display case just in time for Mint to escape a series of explosive balls penetrating her barrier. Some good that did. As Kiko starts to get up, she notices her gun underneath the display case. Not very convenient for it to slide under there, but fortuitous, nonetheless. Kiko ducks down to reach her hand underneath, stretching her arm painfully towards it.

Just as Kiko manages to start sliding the gun towards her with her fingertips, Heartless start appearing around her. Shadows and Soldiers circle Kiko, waiting for some signal to attack. With a new motivation, Kiko effortlessly grabs the gun and pulls it out just as they start leaping. The first bullet pierces right through the nearby Soldier, punching its way through two more Shadows before taking a chunk out of a display case. All of the victims clutch their gaping bullet wounds as some wave of light goes through their bodies, dissolving into nothingness shortly after. Certainly nice to know that this gun isn't shooting blanks, at least. As two Shadows start to bear in on her, Kiko desperately and instinctively does a slash with her sword that severs them in half. Each dissolve into nothingness as their pieces hit Kiko, the evaporating liquid cold to the touch.

Standing up to face the remaining Heartless, Kiko feels a sense of conviction start to well up from within. Maybe she's too big a wimp to take on a sorceress like Mint, but the Heartless are even bigger failures than Kiko could ever be. The term 'disposable minions' isn't even accurate, with the latter word being much too kind for these things. A quick glance around the room reveals that the Heartless are exclusively focused on Kiko, with Uina and Mint continuing to reduce the center section of the shop into a floor of glass, jewelry, and cheap metallic structural pieces. One of the Shadows makes another jump at Kiko, greeted by a chestful of crystalline blade. The rest all rush at the same time, cleanly sliced apart from a wide crescent slice. At least she isn't completely useless.

"This is the Radiant Garden police," a loudspeaker enhanced voice from outside announces, "We have this building surrounded. All combatants are to cease hostilities immediately and assume the position. We will be breaking down the door in short order and sending in a full squadron that is authorized to shoot to kill. This is your only warning."

"Dammit," Mint exclaims as she lands on a mound of debris, holding her arm out in front of her, "Uina, dear, I loved fighting you and I look forward to next time."

"Running away?" Uina asks, suddenly noticing a huge amount of Heartless starting to materialize around him. He breaks his attention away from Mint and starts using his flamethrower attack to keep them at a distance.

"I'm not fighting a squadron," Mint remarks, walking over to where a giant Heartless is starting to emerge, "Screw that noise. They're just tools of oppression relying on numbers and don't have give any emotion into it." As the dreadlock Heartless starts to form, Mint kicks up a support bar and holds it in a lancing position facing the creature. Just as the big Heartless finishes emerging, she stabs the bar right into the gem on its forehead. As the crystal shatters, a small blacklight detonation blows a hole in its forehead that causes it to start reeling in pain. Mint turns around, smiling and waving towards Uina as she tosses the bar away.

"I'll see you later, Grandmaster!" Mint says in an affectionate tone, a black cloud washing over her as she vanishes. Kiko runs over to Uina, slicing her way through two more Shadows and a Soldier. As she joins up with him, the dreadlock Heartless starts to regain its composure and lock its gaze on them.

"What should we do?" Kiko asks, fending off another Soldier with her sword.

"Kill them all, of course," Uina remarks, "Don't shoot the big guy."

"Why?" Kiko asks, taking a shot through a line of five Shadows. Guns this effective can't possibly be legal for civilians.

"I want the coral," Uina starts, spreading the flames all over a small pack, "That's the only good thing that's coming from this public relations disaster and I don't know what those new bullets will do to it. Just keep the others off of me."

"Okay," Kiko grudgingly accepts. Sidekick duty it is. Uina jumps backwards through the air, unleashing a torrent of energy balls at the giant Heartless. Not really much Kiko can do but just clear away the smaller ones, making her way through as she slices them down. She keeps her peripheral vision on the giant Heartless, watching as it sends lightning bolts through its arms at Uina. He continues to evade it effortlessly, sending ball after ball at the giant creature. The explosions just kind of roll off its back, not even really being noticed. Kiko is really tempted to shoot a bullet into it, but she knows better. As she clears away the remaining minor Heartless, the dreadlock creature picks up what remains of a display case and effortlessly tosses it right at Uina. Caught off guard, he gets knocked out of the air and sent flying back behind another display case.

"Professor!" Kiko shouts, realizing too late that calling attention to her like this is just really stupid. She isn't sure why she did it, since she's seen too many movies where this very mistake cost lives. The giant creature turns to face her, readying electricity around its arms as it smiles gleefully. Out of desperation, Kiko defies Uina's orders and fires a shot right into its chest. The stunned Heartless grasps at its wound, giving out a loud bellow of pain as the light starts to slowly spread through it. Focusing hard on the spot, the light stops spreading as the darkness overwhelms it. Without much of an option, Kiko starts firing bullets at as many separate points as possible. Two to the chest, two to the midsection, one in each arm, one in each leg, and one in the head. The light starts to spread through it faster this time, the creature flailing around as it screams in pain.

To Kiko's surprise, the light stops spreading at every single point after more than half the creature is covered, slowly retreating as darkness asserts itself back. Kiko tries to fire some more shots into the Heartless, but the dreaded click hampers that plan. Thinking fast, Kiko starts running in a circle around the creature to get behind it. Maybe the trick here is to just start stabbing it from behind like no tomorrow. It doesn't look like it would really be able to do much to counter her, what with its kind of stubbly arms. As the creature starts to regain its composure, Kiko makes a running jump and stabs right into the small of its back. The Heartless gives another bellow, knocking Kiko off with an elbow. A loud snap emanates from the blade as Kiko gets flung away, another painful crash into a display case starting to feel kind of old. Kiko gets up and looks down to find the handle of the blade loose in her hand. Well, so much for the hope of it being a keyblade all her own.

Uina finally pushes his way out of the debris, grimacing as he pulls shards of glass out of his skin. Sensing an opportunity, he outstretches his rod out in front of him and crosses his other arm over his elbow. A large ball of energy starts forming at the tip of the rod, streams of energy appearing all around and filling into it. As the sphere reaches the size of a beach ball, it implodes into a singularity before expanding into a huge orange beam. The dreadlock Heartless gets launched in the air directly backwards from the impact, getting pinned against the wall as the energy burns away at it. After ten seconds of assault, the beam lets up to reveal a large hole blown through the chest of the creature. It falls to its knees as it starts fading away, light consuming it for a brief second before it explodes. The pinkish heart rises up from its former standing place, dissolving into nothingness just as expected.

Kiko runs over to the pile to try to find the coral, a task she knows is going to prove futile with all the shiny debris on the ground. To her surprise, it actually really isn't. The small piece of coral is glowing with this sort of blacklight, some type of twisted purple energy coursing through it. Kiko senses this kind of despair and emptiness just from looking at it, almost feeling as though she wants to grab it in some bid to end the suffering. Knowing better, Kiko reaches under the collar of her shirt and tries to fish out the brooch. While it seemed like a good idea at the time to keep it on her shoulder, it probably would have been better to put it on a bracelet or something.

"I'll get this," Uina states, pulling out a similar lapis lazuli brooch on a chain. He dips the gem onto the coral, a bright flash of blacklight emanating as the alien object dissolves into the stone. Just as quickly, Uina shoves the brooch on a chain back into his pocket, turning to face Kiko.

"What the hell was that?" Uina asks, sounding irritated as he snatches the gun out of Kiko's hands and shoves it into a vest pocket.

"Um... I..." Kiko stutters, not sure how to respond. She really screwed this up big time. Uina's impending chastising is the least of her worries, with the concern of a potential arrest and/or court martial weighing heavily as well. This is practically on the level of an international incident for all intents and purposes. Before Kiko can worry herself more, a loud crash goes through the room as a tank with a battering ram smashes through the sealed door.

"Let me handle this," Uina says, walking with his hands in the neutral behind-the-head position towards the swarming SWAT team.


	42. Ultimate Answer

It's not a happy mood in the holding cell this evening, weirdly vacant outside of the one person for being the only police station in a huge city. Kiko's antics certainly caused quite a stir, landing her into police custody pending a decision without even so much as a question. It really pisses her off that they just hushed her as they hauled her off, barely even reading her the rights as they cuffed her. It's not really the best feeling in the world to know that you screwed up big enough to warrant SWAT action. Uina seemed confident he could beat the charges back in that shop, but who knows what awaits Kiko back at the castle? Probably a quick dismissal and a turnover to the police for her previous charges. Well, at least Riku is safe even if she's never going to see him again.

"Miss Kiko?" a passive, disinterested male voice says from behind. Kiko turns around to find none other than Leon standing there, a clipboard in hand as he takes some notes. Things are looking up already.

"Yeah?" Kiko asks.

"I talked with the precinct chief," Leon starts, flipping over a page, "You're free to go."

"Um... what?" Kiko asks.

"I told him you were under our orders," Leon starts, "He's doubtful, but he bought it. It's not like he really has much choice in the matter when sector nine gets involved. I also talked with the witness and told her about that disguise. She's still shook up, but she won't try to spread any rumors now. It still bugs me that you dragged Riku's face into this, but I think I understand why you did. All of the security cameras have been blanked, so there's no way anybody can figure out what really happened now. You're free to go back to the academy."

"But... why did you help me?" Kiko asks. She hates just being given free stuff like this.

"I'm not sure of that myself, to be honest," Leon admits, "I guess I just find you brave, if foolhardy. You seem like somebody that's destined for great things once you get past your clumsy period. I didn't exactly believe in Sora when I first met him either and look how he turned out. I'm hoping there's something more to you than it seems."

"But Sora has the keyblade," Kiko responds.

"Sora isn't the only person I've come across," Leon starts, "Back in Traverse Town, I helped a number of people along to greater things. Many people like Trevor Mithas and Simon Le Bon owe their starts to me. It wasn't like Sora was the only person that crossed our path."

"But... look at me," Kiko starts, "I'm useless. I can't even fight without getting my ass kicked. I have no magic powers and I can't do anything more than a normal human. How can you say that I'm as good as Sora?"

"Sora couldn't even fend me off by myself," Leon continues, "And I'm just a guy with a big sword. You stopped both me and Aerith for a while. That's pretty good by any standard."

"But I almost died saving Riku at the clock tower," Kiko continues, "And-"

"I'm sorry," Leon continues, "I'm not buying any of this. If you were truly incompetent, you'd be dead by now. You just need lots of practice and to get over yourself. Anyway, while you seem to want to stay here with your arguing about how you're unfit for society, I have to kick you out. We aren't a hotel service and you do have a place to stay. There are some people outside waiting for you if you'll come with me."

"Thank you," Kiko says in her best tone of admiration. Well, it pays to give a good, humble impression and it's not like she was lying. She probably went a bit too far towards the melodrama, but it just goes with the territory. Kiko walks alongside Leon as they go through the busy police station, passing by the desks of the procedural workers and the dispatch counter with the usual Irish type guy. They emerge through the double doors to find Uina and Riku standing just at the foot of the stairs, both looking fairly neutral about the whole affair. The latter's reaction is the real kicker, though. Shouldn't Riku be pissed that she deceived him and abused his image?

"Hello, Miss Wonderful," Uina says in a droll tone.

"Um... hi," Kiko says, uncomfortable about Riku's presence, "How are you doing, Riku?"

"I'm okay," Riku responds in a short and simple manner. He doesn't seem to want to talk about this.

"Come on, walk with us," Uina offers, stepping to the side as he motions to the new gap. Kiko walks between them, unsure of what she should do. This is just way too calm for her taste. Must be really bad news.

"So, um..." Kiko starts, "What's going on?"

"There's a new prophecy," Uina starts, "Lots of doom and gloom coming up in a year. The usual fun stuff."

"Is that it?" Kiko asks, "Does it involve me or something?"

"That's what we're going to figure out," Uina starts, "You had a dream of the future. Tell us about it."

"Well, um..." Kiko starts, not sure where this is going, "There was this guy in a white suit. He was really scary and talked about some big disaster. Said it would be caused by the prince in yellow and princess in black killing the king in red."

"...and?" Uina asks, doubtful.

"I can't remember," Kiko continues, "My dreams go away really fast. I just remember feelings. Why are you bringing this up now?"

Uina reaches into his pocket and pulls out a large glossy photo. He unfolds it to reveal a painting of some figure in green stabbing some black figure in the head with a silver rod, a small splotch of dark purple right at the point of impact. It's rather vague, almost looking more like a crayon drawing in spite of its use of traditional paint. Kiko isn't sure what to make of it or why Uina is bringing it up now.

"Does this remind you of anything?" Uina asks.

"It just looks like some guy stabbing another guy," Kiko states, "I don't know why this is so important."

"Think about it," Uina starts, "Back at the shop. What does this remind you of?"

"I guess when Mint stabbed that Heartless for no reason," Kiko continues, "But that picture could just be anybody."

"See the colors where the grey thing meets the head?" Uina starts, "It's the same type of explosion."

"I don't get it," Kiko starts, "You say my visions are meaningless, but you take this as evidence? This is like those inkblot tests. You can see anything you want in them."

"Kiko," Uina starts, "This is a prophecy as divined by our group of seers. This picture was painted by none other than Yen Sid."

"I don't get what's so important about this," Kiko comments, "What do you mean by 'prophecy'?"

"I can't tell you," Uina starts, "As paradoxical as it may sound, telling you what you may or may not do just reinforces the outcome. We don't know who the participants are just yet, but you might be one of them. Because of that, we can't tell you anything you don't already know."

"I don't get what you mean," Kiko starts as the group walks into the courtyard, "You're saying we can't change the future? But I did it twice."

"Not quite," Uina continues, "What you saw were just literal futures. Simply even knowing them changes them. I'm not a quantum physicist, but I do know that much. Prophecies are governed by the greater spirits and act as guidelines towards a hinted but unspecified future. Changing them becomes harder the more you know because you are only given enough information to perform your role."

"But..." Kiko says, her mind bending at the logic.

"Riku, if you may," Uina says, motioning over to the young man as they enter the building. Now it doesn't seem so weird for him to show up after all.

"I was part of a prophecy," Riku continues, "'...and the holder of darkness will end the world.' I found this out from none other than Yen Sid shortly after I recovered from Castle Oblivion. I thought it referred to Xemnas, so I did what I could to try and stop him. I involved myself fully in Sora's recovery and headed off every Organization XIII plot I could from behind the curtains. I acted as an assistant to the real Ansem and researched both the Heartless and Nobodies extensively. I rallied forces for King Mickey, fought the Heartless at the edges of the Realm of Darkness, and was ready to place myself in harm's way to avert the future. I was not going to allow another world to be destroyed like I did for so many others under Maleficent's care."

"But it was not to be," Riku continues, "As it turned out, Organization XIII would have probably imploded under its own weight had I not given them something to work against. A lot of their plans would have never worked if Sora hadn't been around, the major one being the harvesting of defeated Heartless. It would have taken them decades to get all the hearts they needed without the keyblade working on their side. Not to mention that the prophecy was referring not to Xemnas, but to me. My presence in The World That Never Was drew the Heartless in because of my use of the Corridors of Darkness. To top it all off, Xemnas really did end up destroying the world, but it was doomed at that point anyway. If I hadn't shown up and brought Ansem along with me, Xenmas would have probably killed himself trying to use the fake Kingdom Hearts. Everything that happened there really did tie back to me. In the end, the simple reality is that I caused the very future I was trying to stop."

"Riku's story isn't the only one," Uina continues, "Prophecies happen all the time. There is only one person in recorded history that has ever defied a prophecy. 'The keyblade of light will save the red moon on the eve of the sorrow'. It was pretty unambiguous: Sora was supposed to do something that would save the red moon of Julius III on a specific date. It is the only planet within explored space that has a red moon and any sort of civilization near it, much less one that has an 'eve of the sorrow'. What happened was during the time of 'the eve of the sorrow', Sora had already been converted into Roxas and was off on the other side of the universe. With no keyblade of light anywhere in sight, the red moon ultimately crashed into the world and killed everybody."

"The reason it didn't come to pass is because a key element was removed," Uina explains, "The rest of it came true. On 'the eve of the sorrow', the moon was corrupted by the Heartless. The only thing that would have saved it was the keyblade wielder sealing it away, but obviously, that wasn't possible. The participants of this had no idea there was any prophecy, so they weren't biased in any way towards fulfilling it. This led to the idea that if we just simply throw enough wrenches into the prophecy without ever directly involving ourselves, then it will be averted."

"How is that even possible?" Kiko asks.

"Beats me," Uina responds, "I'm just a magitek technician, not an actual doctorate in any theoretical science. Anyway, I want you to keep a dream journal and write down as many details as you can remember whenever you have one. Be as thorough as possible and write down any details you remember from your previous dreams. Also, I do, in fact, mean every single dream no matter how personal. If you have a saucy sex dream, I want to know what thread count the sheets had. I'll leave a book outside your room. Any questions?"

"Not really," Kiko says, not wanting to talk any further. It just bends her brain trying to think of how you can stop a plan that fulfills itself by your own actions.

"I'll let you and Riku go ahead," Uina says as they stop by the hallway at the top of the Central Atrium, "I'll see you two tomorrow."

Uina wanders off on his own, heading towards his office as Kiko and Riku stand there. This is a bit awkward, considering that Kiko lied to Riku and then disguised herself as him. Probably doesn't help his reputation any for somebody wearing his face to shoot people in broad daylight. Not much for Kiko to do but just wait for the backlash.

"Kiko?" Riku asks.

"Hmm?" Kiko says, not sure of what's going on.

"Thank you," Riku says in a quieter tone than usual.

"Wait..." Kiko trails off, not sure where to go.

"You went through great risk to save me," Riku starts, "I don't really know that much besides what Professor Uina told me, but he said you were ready to go against the other teachers and go to prison just to stop my death. I'm sort of mad that you tricked me in order to do it, but it's okay."

"You mean it?" Kiko asks.

"Yeah," Riku continues, walking up to her, "I think you did a good deed. Maybe you did it in a bad way, but you had a good reason and it makes sense why you did it this way."

"But-" Kiko starts, surprised as Riku embraces her with his head over her shoulder. Kiko feels a deep sense of confusion, but also this warmth welling up inside of her. She knows better than to expect a turning point at a moment like this, but there's just something so pleasing about this touch. So soft, so gentle, so perfect in every way. She could stay like this forever. Kiko gives in to the feeling, reciprocating Riku's hug as she gets ever so gradually closer. She wants him now more than ever. Her life just isn't complete so long as she doesn't have this perfect boyfriend on her side.

"Of course I appreciate you," Riku starts, rubbing her shoulders, "And I have one favor to ask of you."

"Anything for you, my dear," Kiko responds.

"Don't ever do that again," Riku says in a thin and cold tone, hugging her a bit closer. Kiko feels a bit surprised by this. Here he is hugging Kiko closer than ever before, but she feels even more distanced by his remark. Is he just unable to get the words out? Maybe some mental block that makes him act like a prick? He always seemed so nice in the games. Riku pats Kiko on her back a few times before gradually pushing her away. He's giving this forced, artificial smile that creeps Kiko out just a little.

"I'll see you tomorrow," Riku says, turning around and walking off.


	43. Pong

The rest of the week isn't quite so interesting for Kiko, the days just going by in the usual mundane fashion. Wake up, eat, go to class, get beat up, eat, get beat up more, eat, sleep. It's nice to have a break from the chaos after something so harrowing even if it just means more pain. Riku seems a little nicer lately, but he's still perennially unavailable. Meetings with King Mickey and other undisclosed classified information makes Kiko worried about what he's planning. Maybe it has to do with that prophecy? Maybe he's been ordered not to hang around her? Whatever. There's something gnawing at the back of Kiko's mind about him in general, but she's been a bit paranoid over too many things before and this just seems like her repeating that old routine. There's no reason to believe that Riku isn't just being nice on his own accord, after all. This isn't her old high school. Unfortunately, he's not going to accompany her for this trip they're now embarking on. She has to go with Sora, who might be her same age but certainly doesn't act like it. At least Riku appreciates what she's doing.

"Now, are we all familiar with the rules of conduct?!" the sergeant shouts to the gathered assembly of people.

"Sir, yes, sir!" everybody besides Kiko shouts in response. She realized a while ago that he isn't really paying such strict attention any more. She's rather faceless in the crowd. Why strain her voice?

"Load up!" the sergeant orders, the percussion of the regimented footsteps filling the air as everybody boards the ship. For all of Kiko's faults, she at least has some sense of rhythm. Not much, but it exists underneath her inability to do anything useful. This space ship is just like last time, with the same style seats. At least Kiko is sitting next to Sora instead of that alien. No pink near-death experience this time. It's nice that the rules for this trip are so simple. She gets a standard issue bag and can buy anything she wants so long as it's not alive, not food, and can fit in her luggage. Maybe she can find a pendant to make her stop sucking or something. There are supposed to be some great magic shops around and even some places that can imbue her with abilities should she be compatible. She probably won't get enough money for anything big, but even just some magic is better than none. Kiko opens her issued bag not to find the promised allowance, but a note and three boxes.

To Kiko:

I know you were expecting some cash to spend on stuff. The school did promise you 1000 munny towards general shopping and lazing around, but I had it confiscated. The official reason is because the school was billed some 1500 munny by Leon of the Radiant Garden police to pay for your wardrobe at the start of the year, but the unofficial reason is because I don't view you to be responsible enough to have free reign on your purchases. You might have noticed that we didn't restrict magical items and there are two reasons for that. First, there isn't a thing you can buy on that planet that will harm you. The quality standards for everything both foreign and domestic are so high, even the fireworks are armageddon proof and impossible to hurt yourself with. Second, anyone with any business buying magical items knows what they're doing and quite frankly, that isn't you.

However, I'm not entirely unreasonable. I included both your magi readings and a debit card inside the attached wallet. It has a credit limit of 10,000 munny, but it directs all shipments to me and has a strict 'delivery only' restriction. You will not be able to use it to buy anything to be given to you immediately like food or services. Of course, this means you won't be able to learn any spells. Unfortunate, but that's just how it has to be. Bug Sora to buy you some food if you need a snack, but remember your diet. As for everything else, be reasonable: this is my expense account it's coming from. Perhaps 10,000 munny out of my yearly 10 million isn't much, but they notice sunk costs and I really would rather not have to explain anything stupid. Anyway, think of this as a future paycheck should you either secure me another Prime Heartless core or the red haired boy. Don't worry about keeping this a secret from Sora, Riku, Kairi, or Chou. I gave them all the same deal.

You'll notice a red box, a white box, and a blue box inside your bag. The red box has a harness system carrying your knives, two of my design pistols, and a single piece collapsible version of your rifle. Should go without saying that you should not open it until you're alone. The white box has all the documents and research you need to do either of your two tasks. I also included a clipboard with a set of step by step instructions. Follow them and you should be able to get some results. The blue box is just the standard issue food. Remember the rules, don't tell anybody about our plans, and have a nice weekend.

**--**

The flight is fairly mundane, with nothing of note happening on the trip. Both Kiko and Sora just slept through it, neither really talking with each other. Kiko was hoping for some tip about the future in her dreams, but they've been blank the past few days. Not even anything about what may or may not be happening in the real world with Jamie and the dickwad teacher.

"Hello, and welcome to the New Susanoo City Intergalactic Spaceport," a looped voice says through the P.A. system, "Please have a happy day and enjoy your visit here on Amaterasu."

Sora and Kiko are together walking through the halls, duffel bags over their shoulders. Kiko isn't quite sure about this place. It seems pleasant enough, with everything being both high tech and yet artistically designed. The rule about no shoes or socks seemed like it would be problematic at first, but the ground is made of some type of organic material. Soft and squishy to the touch, it feels like it's gently cleaning her feet with each step she takes. Is the city really so clean and safe for this to be viable? The walls feature elaborate paintings done in pastels and thick black ink with some type of elaborate language worked into it. It feels sort of weird to see figures in white kimonos and red yukatas both in the paintings and walking around, with everybody on both sides eternally cheerful and polite. Kiko could imagine herself living here.

"So, um..." Sora says in a bid for attention.

"Hmm?" Kiko responds.

"What do you want to do?" Sora asks.

"Oh," Kiko answers, "Um... I don't know. Did Uina give you a debit card as well?"

"Yeah," Sora responds, pulling the card out and holding it up, "Want it?"

"Wait, what?" Kiko asks in a surprised tone, "Why would you give it to me?"

"I don't need money," Sora starts as they enter the long hallway to the main terminal, "And I don't really want to buy anything here. I'm happy with what I have and who I'm with."

"But-" Kiko says, a bit surprised as Sora lifts her arm.

"Think of it as my gift to you," Sora says, placing the card in her hand and gently pushing her fingers into a curl around it, "You've been so sad lately and I want to do everything I can to help. Let me show you all the best shops. We can get you some videogames, movies, and music like you've said you wish for. What do you like?"

"I don't know," Kiko responds. Did Riku tell him this? Because she certainly didn't.

"We'll think of something," Sora says, smiling widely at Kiko as he continues to hold her hands. She begins to feel a bit uncomfortable about this. What does he think he's doing? Thankfully, Sora senses Kiko's thoughts and lets go with a vaguely apologetic look on his face.

Sora and Kiko walk out of the hallway into a big atrium, activity surrounding them. The room must be at least a kilometer wide, with at least two dozen different lines for the various travel agencies. The walls and ceiling across from Kiko are made of glass, a huge amount of activity on the other side. People of all types are carrying luggage around, loading and unloading on an absolutely huge variety of vehicles. They have every conceivable color and arrangement, encompassing a huge range of sizes. Kiko always thought that cars were made with the same width specifically so lanes could work, but these things don't even do that. The real surprise is in the carrier animals. There are things from camels to elephants to even floating whales. Such a chaotic selection, but everything still somehow works in harmony with each other. Everybody even seems happy to be driving together.

"Hey, there!" some guy in a green yukata with a camera shouts towards Sora and Kiko in a friendly manner. He runs up to them, stopping a few meters in front.

"Um... yeah?" Kiko asks.

"You two are just the most adorable couple I've ever seen," green yukata says, "May I take your picture?"

"We're not a coup-" Kiko retorts, distracted by the camera flash. How rude.

"Oh, don't be so modest," green yukata says, pulling a picture from a slot on the camera, "You guys look fantastic together. It's so rare to see a girl as tall as you look so pretty and feminine."

"Um... thank you," Kiko responds. She isn't sure whether to find this endearing or insulting.

"I'm with the band Perverted Purity," green yukata starts, pulling something from his pocket, "We're having a concert at the Onamuji Galleria Music Hall. We'd be happy if you could attend. Here are some backstage passes."

"Um... thank you," Kiko responds, taking the two laminated cards on cloth necklaces.

"See you there!" green yukata says cheerfully, giving a thumbs up as he walks away. Kiko just stands there, unsure of what just happened.

"We're so lucky!" Sora exclaims.

"Huh?" Kiko says.

"They're SLB Records' biggest act," Sora explains as they continue walking towards the doors, "Their music is weird, but they're supposed to be great in concert. They do acrobatics and fireworks and stuff."

"Sounds fun," Kiko responds, disinterested. None of the locals in this universe have any taste in music. This probably isn't any different.

"Well, there are some good stores at the Onamuji Galleria," Sora starts, "Want to go there?"

"Sure," Kiko responds. Well, it's not like she knows any better alternative.

"Let's get our ride," Sora says, walking up to a nearby stand.

"Hello, sir," the woman standing behind the counter starts, "Do you have a reservation?"

"Sora with the academy," Sora responds.

"Ah, yes," the woman responds, pulling out and handing over a badge, "Your ryutakashii is waiting outside. Need a porter for your luggage?"

"Oh, that won't be needed," Sora responds, "We only have these bags."

"Sure thing, sir," the woman responds, "Have a nice day here in New Susanoo City!"

Sora and Kiko walk outside to the busy street, the former holding up the badge. Within seconds, a large creature stops right in front of them. It appears to be some cross between a snake and a lizard, greenish brown scales all over. It has four relatively small legs on either side of its body, spindly to the point where they look like they should shatter. Its tail is almost as long as the rest of it, whirling around at random. Its head looks like that of a camel's with two long horns stretching behind and huge eyes like those of a cat. On its back is some type of carriage, with three rows of seats and what appears to be a trunk area. Something about this seems to worry Kiko like nothing else.

"What is this thing?" Kiko asks.

"It's our ride," Sora responds enthusiastically, opening the trunk and flipping his bag inside, "Everyone else is taking the monorail system, but I got us a ryutakashii just for us."

"Um... thank you," Kiko responds, placing her bag inside and following Sora to the side. Kiko is taken aback when Sora just casually leaps right up into the carriage. It's about a meter and a half off the ground, without any ladder or steps to go up. Kiko just stares at it, trying to figure out what she's supposed to do. Is she supposed to jump up? While it's probably in her capability, she'd rather not risk falling on such a busy street. With a skirt like this, it would be embarrassing.

"Coming?" Sora asks.

"Um..." Kiko starts, "Am I supposed to jump up there?"

"You could climb up the leg if you want," Sora answers, holding his arm out, "Here, let me help."

"Okay..." Kiko says, reluctantly taking his arm and climbing up with his assistance. She really doesn't like touching people besides Riku that much. What if they get the wrong idea? Kiko takes a seat far from Sora, leaning against the window.

"Onamuji Galleria, please," Sora says to the creature's head. With a sudden shudder, the creature starts running down the road.

**--**

The mall is a vibrant place, with stores for every thing Kiko would have ever imagined. Jewelry, watches, swords, posters, and a food court with a huge enough selection for Kiko to finally get a good grilled cheese sandwich. The place continues the motif established in the spaceport, with there now also being stage shows all over. Lots of costumed people enacting period dramas that Kiko can't quite figure out, the sound of acoustic instruments filling the air. The magic stores are in a different building that they haven't quite reached yet, but Kiko can't wait. Maybe they'll have something to give her real superpowers so she can actually be useful. Regardless, Sora finally brought her to the other store she has been waiting for: Electronics City. She forgot all about how much fun it was to see what new videogames were out, but this world is sort of disappointing. Everything just seems so generic, right down to the systems themselves. She never thought that anything would ever make the NES look like an artistic masterpiece, but here it was. The demo station just has some type of tennis game without any personality playing on what appears to be a white box. Even the song playing on the P.A. system is kind of lame. Stupid lyrics like 'heartbeat... I'm looking for a heartbeat' are so indicative of why this universe sucks.

"That was 'Heartbeat' by Don Johnson," the host on the audio program starts, "Fresh from the latest SLB Records' release of the same name. Next up, we have the latest hit from Ratt with 'Way Cool Jr.'"

"What the hell kind of name is that?" Kiko asks.

"I don't know," Sora says, "That's what I find sort of weird about SLB. They go really far from the norm."

Kiko just continues browsing the videogame section, hoping to find something good. Everything has such different terminology here. She just wants a good old fashioned RPG, but she can't even figure out what they call it here. They use lame terms like 'bash-em-up' and 'bullet spam' and such. It would really help if there were at least screenshots on the back of these boxes, but next to none of them have them.

"So, um..." Kiko says, giving up, "What would you recommend, Sora?"

"Oh, I don't know," Sora responds, "I don't play videogames. They're more for people who have no powers, you know?"

"...right," Kiko responds. It sort of bugs Kiko to hear her favorite past time dismissed like that. Has Sora forgotten what it's like to be a powerless wimp? Has the keyblade and all its associated power driven out his good sense? Elitism like this is what makes Kiko sad to be at the school. Bunch of pricks with their superpowers and magic and destinies and crap while Kiko gets nothing.

"...and that was 'Way Cool Jr.' by Ratt," the host continues, "We're going to have a little commercial break before we come back with some earlier hits. Roll Over Beethoven by Chuck Berry, Godzilla by the Blue Oyster Cult, and more coming up soon. See you in a few."

As Kiko hears this, she has a sudden revelation. Did that host just say 'Blue Oyster Cult'? That can't possibly be a coincidence. Kiko makes a dash over to the music section, finding it divided into SLB Records and Everything Else. Nice to see that even this universe gets it. Sure enough, they have _Spectres_ on display. Kiko does a quick check around to see that they also have Boston available with their self-titled release. Could she be onto something? Kiko struggles to remember what else Uina talked about before the name Aerosmith comes to her. A quick check reveals _Toys in the Attic_ by them. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have 'Beyond Beautiful' on it, but that doesn't matter. There's something way better that she needs to find. Kiko runs a few aisles over to the Qs and finds that they don't have her favorite band. At all. No matter. These have to be coming from the real world. Someone working at SLB Records must have a portal or something.

"Need help finding anything, miss?" a friendly girl in a store uniform asks.

"I want one of every one of these," Kiko says, motioning towards the shelf.

"You want all of the Queen and Quiet Riot albums?" the girl asks.

"No," Kiko starts, "I want one of everything in this section. Everything with this SBL Records label on it. Can you do that?"

"Really?" the retail girl asks.

"Kiko, what are-" Sora attempts as he catches up, stopping when Kiko holds a finger in front of him.

"Yes," Kiko starts, "I also want a stereo to play them all. I don't care which."

"Of course," the retail girl says, smiling widely, "If you head to the front, we'll ring you up. Thank you so much."

Kiko walks towards the register, with Sora tagging along behind. While she's not entirely sure what she's doing, this is too good an idea to pass up. Maybe Uina will stop bugging her to do stuff if he gets a lot of music. He sounded pretty desperate over the issue of a lack of music a while ago, so maybe this batch will shut him up. Not to mention that perhaps Kiko can finally get some good songs to listen to that isn't whiny crap like 'Drain You'. She's gotten so desperate that even 'Sex Type Thing' is starting to sound like a song about happiness and rainbows. Sora seems bothered by her actions, though.

"Kiko," Sora starts, "What are you doing?"

"I just had an idea," Kiko responds. Sora starts to say something after a few seconds of silence, but he stops when they reach the register.

"Hello, miss," the retail boy starts, "Thank you for shopping at Electronics City. This is quite the order you've made. The total comes out to 988,912 quatloos or 10,143 munny."

"Come on," Kiko starts, "I'm buying all this stuff and I only have 10,000 munny. Discount?"

"Oh," the boy starts, "Of course we'll give you a discount. Anything for a big customer like you. Do you want them all in bags or...?"

"I'll have them delivered," Kiko responds, tossing one of the cards on the counter, "I was told that you could figure out where from this."

"DCCU Debit?" the boy asks, swiping the card through a machine and sliding it back across the table, "Certainly. Thank you for shopping at Electronics City and have a wonderful day."

"Kiko," Sora starts as the boy walks off somewhere.

"Yeah?" Kiko responds, pulling one of the backstage passes out of her pocket as she turns to face him.

"I don't get what you're doing," Sora starts, "That's a lot of money for a lot of music you haven't even heard."

"I don't get to shop very often," Kiko starts, figuring that lying is probably the best way to move away from her real motives, "I just want to have all the music I can get. It's been so long since I've heard anything like the stuff from my old world."

"Sorry," Sora starts, "I was just worried that there was some spell in that radio show or something. I'm so silly to think like that."

"Well," Kiko starts, looking at the card in her hand and glancing to a nearby clock, "They're setting up the concert. We should go."

"That just means the roadies are there," Sora starts, "The band won't come out for a while."

"I just want to see how they do it," Kiko responds, "And meet the band before they start. These are backstage passes, remember?"

"Sure thing," Sora says, gaining enthusiasm, "Anything for you."


	44. Ride of the Valkyries

Back when Kiko first heard about this band being 'big' and playing at the shopping mall, she thought it was a total joke. Who really plays at a shopping mall as a big venue? Most bands would probably fire their agents and break away from their record labels if they found themselves playing to a crowd of people just trying to find their last minute dinner party gifts. What Kiko didn't count on is this music hall being almost half the size of the rest of the complex. The ceiling goes up at least six stories, with there being about half a kilometer of seating rows on three stacked floors. Everything narrows down up to the stage, itself large enough to hold about a hundred people. It has the construction of a classic theater, but epic beyond the imagination of even the most ambitious architect. Awe-inspiring, really. There are already workers unloading amps, drum set pieces, and miles of cable all around in a display of masterfully coordinated harmony.

"Wow," Kiko says, staring at the place. She's sort of sad that her first concert is some boring local band instead of Queens of the Stone Age, but that's just how it has to be. It's not like she intends to stay for the actual concert if she doesn't have to.

"Welcome," someone wearing what appears to be an official uniform says, "Do you two have tickets?"

"We have these," Kiko says, holding up the two backstage passes.

"Backstage, huh?" the roadie says, pointing at a hallway that seems to be the source of all the people, "Just go in there. Second door on your left."

"Thank you," Kiko says, walking toward the hallway. It certainly is quite busy, the thin hallways crowded with people moving equipment back and forth. She has never been to anything related to a concert before, but for it to involve this much work to set up what just seems to be a couple people with guitars, a drum set, and a microphone seems beyond belief. After a few turns, Kiko finally finds the band's room. Decorated to the nines with every amenity possible, its array of couches, food, and make-up is quite excessive.

"Ah, there you are, Sora," someone says.

Kiko turns to find a whole bunch of ornamental pillows strewn around on the ground, making some sort of make-shift couch. There are three ostensibly female aliens of some kind, with pale grey skin and a plume of white feathers in place of hair. Wearing white outfits of an alien geometry, they are all fawning over some man lying with his head on one of their laps. Now here is somebody with a true sense of hedonism and smug self-indulgence permeating his every pore. He's dressed entirely in blacks, with some combination of leather, heavy wool, and spandex on three layers. With one hand holding a glass of wine and another wrapped around the back of a girl, he looks beyond any measure of the mere word of 'pleased'. Rome could only wish it came this close. Even in such a relaxed setting, he has a pair of dark sunglasses blocking his eyes. Kiko always imagined rock stars looking like this. There's some type of magnetism to him, overriding Kiko's better judgment. Reminds her of when she entered the universe, with that dickhead angel.

"Simon!" Sora starts, "Long time no see!"

"I've been expecting you," Simon says, "I'm happy you got the passes. I put that guy out there just for you."

"How did you-" Sora attempts.

"Mr. Le Bon," some guy in a business suit starts as he walks over, carrying a phone, "You have an urgent-"

"Donovan," Simon starts, his tone still magnanimous but also gaining an edge of discontent, "Don't you recognize who this is?"

"Is that... Sora?" the lackey named Donovan asks.

"And you're interrupting the hero of the universe why?" Simon asks.

"I told them you were busy and they wouldn't listen to me," Donovan complains.

"Get out of here," Simon starts, "And tell those dickheads at..."

"Sales," Donovan says. Simon makes a pointing gesture but loses his train of thought. Something about that seemingly innocent word managed to get to him despite its apparent insignificance.

"Trade you this glass for that phone," Simon says, smiling.

"Sure thing, sir," Donovan says, taking the glass from Simon as he passes the phone over. Simon holds the phone up for a second, one of the alien girls taking it from him and holding it up to his head.

"This is Simon..." the black clad man starts, "...When?... The Grandmaster himself?... Send me all the details. Keep a happy thought."

"What was that?" Sora asks.

"Oh, this and that," Simon starts, unwrapping his arm from the girl and sitting up, "Ladies, it's been a pleasure as always, but I think they need you for tuning."

They all give a longing sigh that has some clicking chirp embedded as they get up, two of them helping Simon back onto his feet. They make some type of playfully aggressive kissing motion to him as they leave, the last one out walking in a vaguely sultry manner as she looks back over her shoulder. Simon just gives a quizzical expression as he shakes his head, holding his hands up in an oblivious manner.

"They're nice girls," Simon explains, "Talented, dependable, flexible. Did you know they used to just be called 'Purity'? They had to change their name when they met me."

"That's nice," Sora says in a flat tone.

"So, how have you been?" Simon asks, holding his left arm out. Donovan brings over a black guitar and straps it on.

"Oh, I'm good," Sora says, "Just the same old stuff."

"Good to hear," Simon starts, "How is the king these days? Still crusading against the Heartless?"

"Of course," Sora says, "He started a school to train new heroes."

"Ah," Simon says, "How's that going?"

"It's pretty good," Sora says, "What did you want to talk about?"

"Now, now," Simon starts, "Haven't I told you plenty of times before that the music industry is driven by schmooze? We don't just cut to the chase until we reach an awkward silence."

"We might be here on a small vacation," Sora explains, "But we're still hunting the Heartless."

"You've come to the right place," Simon says, walking up to Kiko, "But first, I should introduce myself to this nice poa you brought along. I'm sorry I've been ignoring you. My name is Simon, and you are..."

"Ki...kik...ki...kiko..." Kiko struggles to say, attempting to suppress her thoughts. This direct address to her is swirling her emotions even more. She can barely even think of anything but just how awesome this guy is.

"Well, Kikik Kikiko," Simon starts, "Breathe deep."

With a sudden flick of the wrist, Simon produces some type of small aerosol can and sprays Kiko in the face. This minor stinging sensation goes through Kiko's head in waves, numbing her tongue and making her feel like she needs to sneeze. She starts coughing, barely even feeling the air coming out. As it goes through her system, her mind starts to clear up of her desire for Simon. She isn't quite sure what she saw in him before. He just seems like some heavy metal guy she used to mock when they showed up on MTV. There must have been some type of magic around him.

"Sorry," Simon starts, "I forget to use this all the time. So, how are you?"

"I don't know," Kiko says, trying to clear her head.

"Let's walk together," Simon says, holding his arms to his sides in an inviting gesture. Sora takes a place to the left, Simon lowering his arm in response. Kiko just stands there hesitantly. Is he planning something? There's just something creepy about this guy. Far beyond his decadence and hedonism, Kiko just senses something kind of unsettling in him. Already, his affection for those aliens seems deviant and bizarre. What human would ever willingly spend time around an alien, much less hang around them like they're some harem? Still, he must know something important if he's releasing albums from the real world. Kiko sighs and walks to his side. As she takes the position, Simon lowers his arm and starts walking off.

"So..." Kiko starts, following behind as they walk out into the hallway, "Where do you get all the albums for the SLB collection?"

"I sign artists from all over," Simon starts, "Amaterasu, Radiant Garden, Agrabah, Atlantica. These lovely girls you just met came from Tytonidae."

"No," Kiko starts, "Those albums came from Earth. I remember them from when I was there. How did you get them?"

"Look," Simon starts, something apparently striking a nerve, "I've had enough with people trying to get me to reveal my signing tactics. Just because you read about some magical alternate universe on Interpedia doesn't mean that all you have to do is pretend you're from there to get me to talk. I'm not going to let something slip by correcting your intentionally stupid story."

"Um..." Kiko starts, thinking frantically. She needs some sort of proof. Maybe if she mentions some famous artist that they haven't released yet. The question is who? Even ignoring the possibility of overlapping with something he has released, he could be from any time period and all the music so far sounds sort of old, so Queens of the Stone Age are out. Kiko curses her lack of knowledge on music. All she knows are recent bands like Beck, Green Day, AFI, Dave Matthews, those whiny grunge CDs...

"Well, if-" Simon starts.

"Paul McCartney," Kiko blurts out. He has to be old, since her mom was always talking about him. Maybe her parents were good for something after all.

"You like The Beatles?" Simon asks, "That's sort of ironic. They're my worst selling act and I even have Mrs. Mill-"

"Alice Cooper," Kiko says, the name coming to her somehow. With that, Simon comes to a gradual stop as they reach a set of double doors and turns to face her. Mission successful.

"I don't have anything by him," Simon starts, "Nothing. No albums, no singles, no entries on a compilation, no promotional items. I have never once mentioned anything about him in any single conversation I've had. None of my competitors have the same sort of access I have. I haven't even thought of him in nearly a decade."

"Does that mean you believe me now?" Kiko asks.

"So you came from Earth," Simon says, rolling his eyes, "That's nice. What does it mean to me?"

"I want to know how you got all those albums," Kiko asks.

"I made a deal with an angel on my way over," Simon starts, "She gave me my album collection from Earth. Considering I was a music critic back there, that was a pretty big selection. More than enough to start up a record company with an edge over the crappy regional mainstays. I've only released maybe a tenth of them so far."

"You don't have a portal?" Kiko asks.

"Ha," Simon scoffs, "Why? Do you want to leave or something?"

"No," Kiko responds, "I just know... I want some Queens of the Stone Age albums." That could have been messy. Sora is not in on Uina's secret and if he was, he'd probably do something about it. Uina could destroy Kiko if he really wanted to, so playing along is the best tactic.

"Don't know them," Simon responds, "They sound kinky. Are they a hair metal girl band or something?"

"No," Kiko responds, "They're guys."

"Heh," Simon responds, "Drag queens with furs and clubs, huh? You really are sort of weird."

"They're not drag queens," Kiko starts, "They changed their name from Gamma Ray because they were going to get sued. Josh Homme was told by someone they're like the queens of the stone age, so he went with it. He said kings of the stone age would be too macho."

"Right..." Simon starts, "Unlucky for you, I don't have anything by them. Sorry. And as much as I'd like to talk more about this, we need to get started."

Simon turns back and hits the double doors open. The parking lot appears to be completely clear of cars, with a helicopter sitting there ready for take-off. It just seems to be a standard civilian helicopter, special only in the sense that it has a set of speakers affixed to the front. They must have loose laws on advertising. Simon casually walks in the open side, taking a seat at the end and buckling himself up. Sora and Kiko follow, getting in the row forward of him. Kiko isn't quite confident that she should be near the open side, but buckles like these aren't going to let her fall out too easily.

"Course heading: warehouse," Simon says to some sort of robot in the front seat. With a sudden bounce, the helicopter lifts off and starts flying over the streets. The wind initially worries Kiko as it hits her at an uncomfortable direction from below, but as they clear some distance, it goes away.

"What did you need?" Sora asks.

"It's quite simple," Simon starts, "My warehouse was taken over by the Heartless about a month ago. I need your help taking it back."

"Is that it?" Sora asks.

"Yeah," Simon responds.

"Can't you do it?" Sora asks, "You were pretty good during the war."

"I'm not as powerful as I used to be," Simon starts, "These Heartless aren't your garden variety. There's just something unnaturally strong about them."

"What about the other heroes?" Sora asks, "This planet has so many of them."

"No can do," Simon responds, "The heroes here are too destructive. They all use explosions and shockwaves and thunderstorms and crap. It would ruin me if my stockpile of 2200 albums got destroyed. Also, this place is secret due to corporate espionage. Even if they never figure out how to technically or legally steal my work, they could still cripple me by destroying it all. I don't want that."

"You're sure there isn't anybody who can join us?" Sora asks.

"I think you'll be okay," Simon starts, "You saved the universe. You can save a warehouse. 'Kikik Kikiko', what's your weapon?"

"Guns and knives," Kiko responds. It's sort of dickish of him to use what was obviously Kiko's flustered inability to state her name, but it's not like she can really complain.

"Knives," Simon says, "No guns."

"But I'm no good with knives," Kiko responds.

"Why even tell me you can use knives?" Simon asks, "You can just wait with me, then. Sora is good enough on his own."

"I'll go with Sora," Kiko says, balking at the possibility of having to spend any more time with this guy, "Why not? I can't die."

"That's the spirit," Simon says, getting distracted by some buzzing sound. He pulls out a completely different cell phone from a pocket inside his jacket, flipping it open. After a few seconds, he stuffs it back in.

"Change of course," Simon starts, "The Tsukuyomi Bazaar. Hover at a safe distance, keep it in view."

The helicopter flies over to the new location, revealing a sprawling market in ruins. There are Heartless of all types everywhere, mostly of Shadows and Soldiers but also with some new type amongst them. They appear to be these hulking monstrosities colored largely in red or blue scales over their black skin, with curly hair and beards forming a mane and two horns on their heads. Almost as large as these creatures are the clubs they carry. Made of some type of steel with rows of spikes, they look like they could crush a car with a single blow. What's weird about this motley group of Heartless is their total restraint in attacking people. They're rounding up people in the center, but they aren't actually extracting any hearts. They're just holding them there, shoving back the ones that try to escape and making threatening gestures at them as they scream for help.

"We have the power now!" some woman shouts through a megaphone in a completely bored and disinterested tone. It's hard to make out from the distance, but she appears to have white hair and a long lab coat. Great. Another freak from Discord. Untold lightyears is apparently not nearly good enough to keep the weirdness out.

"Not so fast!" someone shouts from off in the distance. The woman makes a few pointing gestures, the Heartless obeying unspoken orders. The circle holding the civilians hostage open up, the side opposite of the gap pushing the people away in a rude but unharmful fashion. They all run for safety as the Heartless start taking up regular formations, with shadows and soldiers forming lines in front of the monstrous creatures.

"Who are you?!" the woman shouts through the megaphone, still sounding bored. Whoever has shown up is obscured by the building blocking Kiko's sight.

"We are the Vox Zen Sisters!" a collection of pubescent female voices shout, "Your tyrranical reign has gone on far enough! These peo-"

"Shut up and fight," the woman holding the megaphone retorts in a passive voice. As the girls continue with their speech unabated, the woman makes a few pointing gestures that cause a detachment of Heartless to rush forward in a regimented fashion. Even without being able to see what's happening with the girls, there are still bolts of energy and sprays of black dissolving goo flying through the air. Chunks of the scenery get blown away, with shockwaves in the grounds uprooting fruit carts and dismantling the cages of chickens. Even the windows of the nearby buildings start shattering from the force of something. The woman just continues watching until things go silent for a bit. She sighs and starts pointing around, with some groups of Heartless running towards the scene of the chaos.

"Stop right there, evil-doers!" shouts a familiar voice from out of sight. Kiko searches around frantically, trying to find the source. She isn't quite sure what she should even do, but there must be something. Uina did mention him and who knows what doing both of the tasks would acheive. After a futile couple seconds, she glances back at the woman in white to find her looking up at some building. Following her line of vision reveals a red haired boy in a white and red outfit standing on a horizontal flag pole. The woman in white makes a rolling motion with her free hand without saying anything.

"I am the Cosmic Guardian Yami Ryuko, champion of justice," the boy continues, striking combat poses with his arms and flat palms at a rate of one per second, "Where ever evil may crawl up from the shadows..."

"Good old Yami," Simon remarks, "I was worried about him. I thought he finally got killed from his predictable techniques. I guess he was just hiding."

"What do you mean?" Kiko asks.

"Yami used to always show up every time some other group was defeated," Simon starts, "He was kind of the hero for the heroes. Then one day, he stopped. I'm not sure when it happened, but it wasn't that long before my warehouse was jacked and people started disappearing."

"Think it's connected?" Sora asks.

"Oh, without a doubt," Simon responds, "But it looks like he's okay."

"Look again," Kiko says, pointing at the mayhem unfolding down below. Out in the middle of the bazaar is a rather disconcerting image of destruction surrounding the young boy. Yami is doing his best to fend off the swarm of well-coordinated Shadows and Soldiers, but for all his efforts, it just isn't working. He just doesn't have enough boomerangs or spirit bombs to drive them back. Just as they start to pile on top of him, a pillar of light explodes from the heap and sends all the Heartless flying away as they dissolve. Yami emerges from the pillar several meters above, his body bathed in a liquid light that melds into the skin and clothes. Streams of it trail off as he dives towards the woman, holding a blade made of pure light over his head with both hands. Just as he was supposed to hit, a giant red Heartless clubs him away with a precision strike to the midsection. He effortlessly does a backwards flip to land on his feet, with several more of the creatures running in to attack.

"Ouch," Simon quips. Mock sentimentalism aside, this is bad. With Yami down for the count and surrounded by vicious monsters, his odds are pretty grim. Kiko realizes that she's probably in the best position to act right now. She doubts Sora could really do anything, since they're pretty far away and all his ranged attacks seem like splash damage and/or barely controlled. He'd probably end up killing Yami and that would nullify the whole point of trying to save him. There's also the fact that he's sitting on Kiko's side, strapped in without any clear line of sight down to the action. Simon doesn't even seem to be considering the possibility of helping, but even if he did, he doesn't seem all that powerful. His tone about taking back the warehouse suggested that he can't even do close combat, so a kilometer distance like this would just be too much. Looks like the ball is in Kiko's court and she needs to get nothing but net if she wants to prove her worth. Reaching back as she leans forward, she pulls out the largest piece on the harness to reveal some type of bizarrely organized flat box with a conspicuously white handle on one side. Following the instructions she read earlier, she does a single hard shake downwards that causes a chain of reactions, ending with a heavily modified sniper rifle complete with scope.

"Kiko, what are-"

She doesn't even let Sora finish the sentence. Quickly taking a standard shoulder mount, she fires a shot down into the action. Her target is the closest monster towards attacking the poor boy, lifting the club up while charging forward. With a bright flash, the round blows a huge chunk out of its back that leaves a gaping hole visible even from the helicopter. The rest of the creature dissolves as light washes over it, leaving nothing behind but the unwieldy club. Yami takes this opportunity to shove himself off of the ground through the newly formed gap in the ranks, doing a somersault in mid-air before landing on his feet and spinning to face the aggressors.

"Nice shot," Simon says, enunciating each word in a tone of disbelief.

"Kiko!" Sora says in a highly repressed shout of indignance.

"He was in trouble," Kiko says, realizing that she probably has no right to interfere like this, "Besides, we really need to talk to him." Sora opens his mouth, but he just kind of sits there without anything to say. He almost looks embarrassed to be talking to Kiko like this. He turns to Simon after a few seconds, smiling nervously.

"You can keep this a secret, right?" Sora asks, chuckling.

"Of course," Simon responds.

Kiko turns her attention back to the melee down below. She could probably just end this if she hits the woman in grey. At a distance like this, she's just a target on a shooting range. A quick check reveals her to be looking around as the large Heartless battle Yami to a standstill. They can't seem to hit him, but they effortlessly knock away every projectile he sends. Kiko carefully lines up her shot, zooming in to get a better bearing. Just as she's about to reduce the woman's head to chunky salsa, her face becomes visible. While it has this kind of determination on it, a visible line of wetness marks where tears have rolled down her cheeks. Kiko gets the sense that she really shouldn't take the shot if this person doesn't even seem to really want to be there. There must be a bigger picture and shooting her isn't going to reveal it.

Suddenly, the woman points right at Kiko and starts running away, with the large red and blue creatures covering her like secret service body guards. Now this is someone that actually knows what she's doing and has the Heartless that can pull it off. They run to the nearest alleyway out of Kiko's line of sight, ducking inside while the Shadows distract Yami from following.

"Couldn't you have shot her?" Simon asks.

"I could have," Kiko starts, "But I saw something."

"What?" Sora asks, sounding one part sympathetic and two parts irritated. A couple loud screeches manage to pierce through the cacophony of the helicopter blades and wind rustling, chilling Kiko to the bone. She looks around to see a couple wyverns swooping in, more appearing in black clouds of rapidly dissipating smoke. In total, six of them seem to have invested their interest in the helicopter and they are all pissed. They seem to be circling around like vultures waiting for a sign of weakness, keeping their eyes on the target. This is a pretty grim scenario that Kiko hadn't even imagined. What person has ever controlled the Heartless with such precision from that far away?

"That's just great," Simon remarks, "Why not give them an engraved invitation while you're at it? Change of course: the warehouse. Evasive maneuvers."

The helicopter starts flying back on its original heading, zigging around randomly in the process. It really worries Kiko that she's going to get flung out, but the buckles are still much too good for that. Suddenly, one decides to make a move and dives in towards the open side. Kiko lines up a shot, completely missing as the wyvern does a spiral downwards in response. She's never even used the damn gun on them before and they're already avoiding it like nothing. Whoever owns these sure did train them. As it flies underneath, another one makes a ferocious dive from the closed side. It latches onto the rail facing vertically, starting a barrage of headbutts that shake the helicopter to the core. It's a good thing those straps are so thick and the buckles are so heavy.

"Hang on," Simon says, holding his guitar up and plugging in a nearby cable. He starts casually playing some grating rhythm that makes Kiko's ears want to bleed, speeding up gradually with sweep picks and arpeggios and stuff. As he gets to a truly outstanding speed that sounds like random static with his hands appearing as little more than a blur, a wave of distortion goes through the air from around the craft. The wyvern gets flung off, launched at an impressive speed towards the ground as it struggles to get back in control. So that's what Simon's big talent is. Seems kind of underwhelming if it takes this long. Kiko decides that this is probably a good window to try and shoot a couple of these things. She lines up a shot and fires, clipping the tip of the tail of one. A wave of light goes through it, causing it to scream painfully as it loses altitude.

As Kiko tries to line up another shot, all the wyverns start making a coordinated air strike. Simon does some more deadly static, a blade of sonic distortion slicing one of the wyverns in half. Too bad there are several of these and they all aimed for the amplifier cluster on the front. Each passing wyvern headbutts and tail smashes the speakers, nearly a dozen impacts ending with a metallic ripping sound. There goes Simon's usefulness. Three wyverns in a V formation fly together on the right side, barely in Kiko's sight as they keep low of the craft. She takes a shot, hitting the one in front right in the head. Certainly pretty lucky, but it's not like it really matters where these rounds hit. As it dissolves, the other two swerve to either side. One goes out of view, but the other is still in Kiko's sight and prime for the picking. She fires a miss, following it up with another miss before finally landing a hit. Each dissolved Heartless by way of spreading light seems so satisfying. By Kiko's count, there should only be one or two left.

After a few seconds of respite, two impacts from below shake the helicopter. The helicopter engine starts whining as the machine sinks down from the weight. Kiko tries to bend to see under, but her seatbelt restricts her movement too much. For all its benefits in keeping Kiko fixed to safety, that very function is getting in the way now. Without much option for obtaining a better view, she carefully undoes her seatbelt and hangs on to a piece of the ceiling to keep herself grounded while holding the rifle in a casual manner. Under the helicopter are the two remaining wyverns, perched onto each rail like hanging bats. Kiko starts to aim her gun at the closest one when it suddenly lashes back up, biting into her shoulder. As a surge of pain goes through her body, her trigger finger twitches just enough to fire the gun. The bullet pierces through the creatures right leg, which, unfortunately, isn't enough to stop it from yanking her out just before it collapses into nothingness. The helicopter and the departing wyvern grow more distant with every second.

Kiko feels panic like nothing before as she starts falling through the air. She has escaped death many times before, but there's no way she's getting out of this one. A fall of a kilometer is more than enough to kill anyone without superpowers. This must be her fate, since she did not even get to see a vision of the future. As if just to hammer in how thoroughly and completely screwed she is this time, the second wyvern is diving right towards her. Well, even if it decides to rip her throat out, at least she's not going to live too much longer to appreciate the agony. It swoops right in and to Kiko's surprise, the wyvern instead grabs her with both of its talons. As it starts flapping furiously while securely clutching her, it holds her right up for a face to face with its vicious, teeth-baring smile. Apparently, what it plans is just so much worse than death by falling ever could be. After a few seconds, it spasms backwards from the impact of something, letting Kiko go. As it flounders around in the air, Kiko gets to appreciate just how doomed she truly is now when she'll hit the ground.


	45. A Million Billion Snowflakes

Winter weaves a cold blanket over the diverse yet subsidized suburbia. Untold googolplexes of frigid white specks of water, intricate in their design with fractal patterns of branching stems, fall at a steady rate. With each flake that travels its wayward path from the heavens, a more cohesive whole is made on the ground. Indeed, even a single meter of snow has billions of flakes contained within what feels like so insignificant an area. It becomes hard to remember this at times, for as each flake hits the ground, it transforms into something else. Some might simply catch a bad bit of random warmth and melt back into the water they stem from, but most simply dissolve into the greater whole of the larger mass, devolving into a sludge with barely any diversity. Some don't even leave their clouds, never quite gaining the gravity to escape. But occasionally, there is that rare snow flake that manages to find its stake in the world. Refusing to become part of the collective, they simply won't budge in their metamorphosis.

The same could be said of humanity. Divided into arbitrary hetero- and homozygous tribes, each expect their members to conform to a set of standards without deviating from the norm. There might be the illusion of diversity, but just as how the molecules of each individual might differ slightly, they become lost in observation of the greater whole. However, even a snowflake on the mound might keep its pure crystalline form, so, too, may a human stand out from the rest. One such exceptional human is a nine year old girl in one of the more modest homes of this suburbia. She rejects the expectations of her homozygous brethren, drawing from the forbidden fruit of heterozygous hobbies and activities with little a care of how the world views her. Right now, she is in her room playing her current favorite game.

"Come on!" some boy amongst a pack bemoans, "Let us play!"

"It's my Playstation two," the girl says, continuing her attempts to beat this boss. Damn that Black Tyrano and his countdown attack. Being toasted by fire breathing dinosaurs lacks dignity. Maybe Frog with his water attacks would be better on him, but Marle is just too cool to put away even if she doesn't make very good double techs.

"That game is so poop," another boy comments, "Those graphics are so bad. My first Playstation looks better than that. Why are you playing poop with a Playstation two?"

"Hey!" the girl says, unhappy about the criticism of her favorite game, "This is mine! I can do whatever I want with it!"

"Your mom said we could play," some boy complains.

"We rented football," some other boy says. He casually turns off the girl's game and flings it aside with all the care of a metaphorical bull in a china shop. The girl, already irritated by these kids bashing her favorite video game, just couldn't take it any more. She had finally defeated that damn dinosaur as he turned the game off. All that progress flushed down the toilet because some whiny little ruffian wants to play Madden.

"Go away!" the girl shouts, rising up and shoving the boy down. She towers over the brat, the four feet and ten inches making her a veritable giant to the runt below.

"Ooh," some boy starts in a mocking tone, "Tomboy!"

"She's so tall!" some other boy remarks, "Is she really nine?"

"Emmie, Emmie, tall and skinny!" another boy jeers in a sing-song tone.

"She's a troll!" the shoved boy mocks as he gets back on his feet, "She's going to eat us!"

"I said go away!" the girl yells, making a rather frightening face as rage builds up. The boys all run away, making high pitched mocking screams as they barrel through the door. The girl chases after them, following them through the upstairs hallways over the carpeted landscape. She can't believe the nerve of these kids. This trip is her sanctuary away from all the taunting and bullying she gets in school and at home, yet even now at Christmas as an invited guest, she still gets her privacy invaded? Is nothing sacred any more? As three of the boys run headlong down the stairs, the fourth slides down the banister backwards while sticking his tongue out. The girl runs down after this gang of hellions, sliding a bit on the wooden floor as she turns around a corner. All five of them ignore the protests of the adults as they continue their chase through dining rooms and hallways.

After a few rounds of pursuit, the girl starts to lose distance around the reading room. She feels like the world is bearing down on her body, her bones becoming heavy and her lungs becoming smaller with every repitition of her respitory cycle. As the boys run around the corner through the kitchen door, she reluctantly stops by a couch. She breathes heavily as she stands there with her body supported by her hands, each gasp feeling like a breach of herself. In and out, in and out. The air feels like shards of tiny glass shaving away pieces of her throat.

"Emily!" an older woman exclaims, concern drenching her voice as she runs over, "Are you okay?!"

"I'm... fine," the girl responds, "Just... leave me... alone."

"Are you sure?" the woman asks, hugging the girl, "You shouldn't push yourself like that."

"Mom," the girl starts, getting her breathing back in order, "Why did you tell the cousins they could play my games?"

"You've been playing games all week," the woman identified as the girl's mother answers as she breaks her embrace and assumes a crouched position, "You promised me you would let your cousins play if I allowed you to bring it here."

"They threw my game out," the girl continues, "I just beat Black Tyrano and they turned my game off for a stupid football game. What if they scratched the CD?"

"I'm sorry," the mother says, "I thought they'd be gentler. If they broke it, I'll just get you a new one. If it's not your fault, I'll happily replace it."

"But the Black Tyrano was so hard," the girl says, "What if I never beat him again?"

"Honey-bunch," the mother says, oblivious to the cringe such a pet name elicits, "You'll beat him again. You're so good at those games. Come on, it's Christmas Eve. Everybody wants to see you. The Lerquins are here, as are your Uncle Jake Maroon and Grandma Maybelle McMillan. Aunt Tami Clefen has a present for you she insists you'll love. Please come with me and don't worry about your cousins. I'll make sure they don't hurt your games."

"Fine," the girl responds. She follows her mother to the other room reluctantly, dreading what those hooligans of cousins are doing. They probably ran back upstairs and are even now deleting her save games and reading her journal. Those bastards. If this is how they treat esteemed guests staying at their house, she'd never want to live with them.

Her mother leads her to a large living room, fully decorated with couches, portraits, and books. There's a lot of history in this room, having played host to generations of proud people over the century and several decades of its existence. Sitting around a coffee table are the faces of the eons, old and young alike united for a holiday in this coldest of winters. Grandma Maybelle, her face powdered up to unnatural layers as usual. Uncle Jake, his perpetual smile fighting the gravitas of his ever loosening skin. Aunt Deirdre, her glasses obscuring her face. Aunt Tami, her raven hair flowing into her black dress. And the Lerquins, friends of the family and more than happy to come to an event like this.

"Hey, Emily!" Uncle Jake starts in his rough hewn voice, "How are you? It's good to see you."

"I'm okay," the girl responds.

"Come over here and give your grandma a kiss," Grandma Maybelle says. The girl reluctantly walks over and pecks her on the cheek, careful not to spend any more time than is required. She hates the taste of old person flesh, especially when it has about half a container of foundation and blush on it.

"So," Aunt Deirdre starts, "What have you been doing these past few days? You almost never come downstairs."

"Oh, I'm doing great," the girl starts, hoping that she'll alienate all these icky old people, "I finally beat Magus. It took me so long to kill Ozzie, but I figured out that there was other stuff to attack and then he was easy. Then I-"

"Is that a Nintendo game?" Grandma Maybelle asks.

"It's a Playstation game," the girl responds, "Nintendo is that other company."

"Oh, how dreadful," Grandma Maybelle continues, gaining an edge of fierce disapproval, "Video games in this house? What an irresponsible parent you've been, Angela!"

"Mom," the mother continues, "She likes video games and they aren't hurting her. I'm not going to take them away just because you don't approve as usual."

"I never!" Grandma Maybelle continues, "Don't you want your daughter to grow up to be a proper lady? She needs to do lady things like read books and play with dolls, not sit in front of the idiot tube letting Satan work his influence over her. You know those video games rot your brain."

As the mother argues with the grandmother, the girl starts to feel regret over her choice of conversation topic. Maybe talking about video games in mixed company like this really was a bad idea. Half of the people here seem to be backing up Grandma Maybelle's charge that video games are heretical, beastly creations of the underworld and that any girl who would play them must be a monstrous thing growing up to become a beastly witch. The girl starts to shed tears as she realizes just how alone she truly is amongst her peers. The boys reject her, her parents don't understand her, and the relatives on her mother's side are so mean because they can't comprehend her favorite activity. At least the Lerquins understand her, but they're not important in this family and could be taken away from her.

"Cheer up," Aunt Tami says, "Don't worry about anyone else."

"Aunt Tami?" the girl asks, surprised.

"They just don't understand you," Aunt Tami starts, "You're a special girl. Don't let them tell you what you have to be. Special people always make the sheep feel threatened. "

"But I'm so tall," the girl responds, "Everybody makes fun of me for being so tall. I hate it. I wish I was short like everybody else so I could fit in."

"Emily," Tami starts, "Do you know how tall the average supermodel is?"

"I don't know," the girl responds.

"Nearly six feet," Aunt Tami responds, "In order to even get into the business, you have to be at least five feet eight inches. The average height of adult women is five foot four inches. These are the people that appear in magazines, show off the latest fashions on TV, and get the attention of men everywhere they go. They may be tall, but nobody would ever dare call them freaks for it."

"You're not lying, are you?" the girl asks. She glances over at her oppressive grandmother and cold relatives arguing with her oblivious mother. Things seem to have diverted away from the initial topic, with everybody invested in some topic completely foreign to the girl.

"Of course not," Aunt Tami responds, "I wouldn't lie to you like that. I want you to be happy. I'm just an old maid who never got to have the pleasure of a child of my own. I've always viewed you to be like a daughter to me."

"Thank you," the girl responds.

"You know," Aunt Tami continues, "Your mom used to be criticized just as much as you. She didn't read Louisa May Alcott or Laura Ingalls Wilder, finding the escapist works of Ian Fleming and Robert A. Heinlein preferable. She rejected ABBA and the Eagles in favor of The Beatles and Yes. These aren't even things that are 'just for boys', either, but she was given a lot of heck for it. Your relatives just aren't happy if they can't find something to criticize of their children."

"Really?" the girl asks. She never knew her mom was in this sort of position. She's always on her case for not cleaning up or getting bad grades. She's so oppressive. How could she have ever been in any similar position?

"You bet," Aunt Tami responds, picking up a wrapped present from the table, "But enough about the past. I don't think this argument is going to end any time soon and with the attitude against video games, it's probably better if they don't see the present I have for you. Go ahead, open it before anyone notices."

The girl tears at the wrapping paper recklessly, tossing pieces of paper aside with nary a care in the world. Underneath that flimsy barrier, she starts to feel that smooth, satisfying feel of shrink wrapping. That light weight of five ounces, that soft click of the contents, that perfect rectangular shape. A few more tears reveal her prize, something she always wished she had since seeing that fateful television commercial.

"Do you like it?" Aunt Tami asks, "I remember you said you like Squaresoft."

**--**

With a sudden flash, Kiko's mind is brought back to the present. It seems that Kiko is still heading towards the ground at a pace much too fast for her comfort. Panic sets back in as she realizes that she only has about four seconds left to make peace with whatever deity she desires. She closes her eyes and spins to look upwards, deciding that she'd rather not even see the ground coming as she counts the seconds remaining in her life. Three... two... one...

...

...

...

Negative three... negative four... negative five...

Kiko gets a bit too antsy in the face of her new inability to count properly and opens her eyes to get a better gauge of her distance. To her shock, she isn't falling directly towards the ground so much as she's falling at a sideways angle. Kiko has no idea what's going on, thinking frantically about what could have possibly happened. She should be a red splatter on the pavement by now. Does gravity have a sick sense of humor in this world and want to make sure that she gets to witness her death?

As she gets close to the ground, she suddenly spins around to face upwards. An impact goes through her, but outside of making her feel a great amount of discomfort and causing her to bite into her tongue, it proves decidedly non-fatal. She bounces off of the ground and rolls in the air, falling back towards the ground face first. An even more sudden spin brings her facing back upright. Another impact proves decidedly less violent, painful only because of the vibration going through her mouth. She rolls along the pavement, bits of flesh scraping off on the rough hewn asphalt. She comes to a gradual stop, battered and confused but nonetheless still alive. How can she break her legs at fifteen meters but survive a full kilometer?

"Are you okay?" a young male voice asks from behind. Kiko suddenly realizes that somebody intercepted her in mid-air. That's the obvious explanation. She looks down at her midsection to find two arms wrapped around securely. How could she possibly not even feel it?

"I'm okay... I think," Kiko responds weakly.

"Are you sure?" the boy asks, "I can heal you if you're hurt. My mahou allow me to protect the innocent, after all."

"Yami?" Kiko responds, a bit surprised by this fortuitous turn of events. What are the odds of one of her objectives keeping her alive? Fate has not only kept her alive, but delivered her right into the arms of the person she needs to recruit.

"At your service," Yami responds, "Mind if I help us get up?"

"Sure," Kiko responds, thinking hard on what the script said as Yami pushes them up to their feet effortlessly. Maybe she can skip the meet cute routine, since he did just save her in a glorious manner. The question is how to pin him down when he's documented as being rather migratory. Uina's prose is just a bit too complex for her to remember clearly, but there was something about having to convince him about a larger threat and a need to work together with King Mickey's organization. Maybe she can bluff her way through, but what was the next sentence to grab his interest? Something about the oni? Yami assumes a position in front of Kiko, holding her hand up and placing his other on her scraped cheek.

"Hoimi!" Yami exclaims with conviction, light swirling all around and through his arm. Kiko feels this sensation of pure bliss go through her, the pain driven away as she feels her skin mend itself. Just as she was starting to really get into the feeling, it goes away. So pleasurable, yet so fleeting. She tries to remember what she was thinking about before. It had something to do with Yami, but the big question here is what?

"Yami!" a bunch of excited female voices shout from afar amidst cheers. It seems the fan club has caught up.

"I better be off," Yami says in a somewhat less jovial tone, stepping back, "Take care and stay safe, fellow hero."

"Wait!" Kiko shouts as Yami jumps off, realizing what she wanted to ask him, "Use that transfer thing on me!"

Kiko stands there as Yami takes off, disappointed to the loss of getting enchanted again. She really wishes she thought of it faster, since it's highly unlikely she'll ever get this chance again. She could have been able to leap through the clouds and scale the tallest mountains with no effort if only she got him to just use that spell. So close, yet so far. She looks down to the hand he held, finding a single feather clasped inside. Maybe this will give her insight into his powers. She puts it in one of her pockets carefully, deciding that maybe she can get somebody to analyze it for her. Even though Yami has quite visibly left the area, that pack of girls in red and white yukatas still seem to be approaching pretty fast. They all surround Kiko, a surprising unity in their movements in spite of their chaotic nature.

"What did he mean by 'fellow hero'?" some token alien girl amidst the group asks. She has the same grey skin and white feather plume as those people back at the concert, but she's quite a bit younger and has some type of flaky, decaying shell of a beak around her mouth. Everybody else in this group is just the usual pseudo-human. Nobody seems all that attractive or noteworthy, certainly.

"You were able to hear from that far away?" Kiko asks. She just gets a couple confused stares for a few seconds. It is a simple enough question, yet they seem to find it bizarre. Maybe it's the rhetorical nature of it?

"I think it means she's his girlfriend!" some other girl posits with glee. With that, the crowd goes wild with excitement, cheerful expressions all around. A couple girls give squees of joys as others start asking questions without restraint, their voices becoming less distinct. One girl on each side get uncomfortably close while holding onto Kiko's arms as the rest stand on their toes to try to get their heads in real close.

"Is that where he's been?" asks one girl. Kiko tries to think of some lie to abate her, but she doesn't even get the chance to open her mouth.

"Oh my god!" another girl starts, "Have you two kissed yet?"

"Have you done it?" another girl asks, not even waiting for the previous girl to finish her sentence. Things have just crossed a certain line that Kiko holds sacred.

"Of course they have," some girl more towards the back says, "It's been over a month. They must have been hiding to get frisky." Another round of excited squees echo through as they get even more rowdy. Kiko feels herself getting pulled back and forth as others try to bask in her warmth. She is starting to get a bit claustrophobic from this treatment. Is this what passes for acceptable behavior here?

"What's your name?" somebody finally asks, "I want to write a story to commemorate this true love."

"Um..." Kiko starts, disappointed that everybody finally wants to know her name, "...Marle." Even if Kiko is a fake name, she doesn't want to even give them that.

"Really?" the alien girl asks, "Because I'm reading your aura as 'Kiko'."

"Oh..." Kiko responds. She's now a lot more afraid of this group with this revelation. If they have psychics amongst them that can filter the lies, this is not going to end on a very pretty note. She needs to come up with a way out of this. What if they manage to stalk her back to Radiant Garden just through her name?

"So you're masking Marle with Kiko?" the alien girl asks, ecstasy going through her face, "She likes us!" As if defying Kiko's expectations, they get even more excited and manage to get even closer to her than she ever thought possible. Some are even giving cheers with her name as another manages to come up with a rhyme involving it on the spot.

"What mahou do you use?" another girl asks.

"Um..." Kiko starts, trying to think of a way out of explaining this one. They would probably be mad if they found out that the person they are convinced is their idol's girlfriend doesn't have even the slightest bit of 'mahou' in her. Maybe she can play the guns off as magic? It's about as good an idea as any and with the magitek construction, it's not even that far from the truth.

"What's he like?" the writer girl asks, thankfully diverting the question before any answer had to be given, "Does he have any kinks? Do you guys do all the weird stuff? I want to be completely accurate in my story!"

"I never thought he'd go for someone so big," a girl remarks while giving an analytical look, squeezing one of Kiko's breasts without even the slightest bit of shame or embarrassment. As much as she'd like to smack this rude urchin, the restraint of the excited girls proves unbreakable. They just seem to latch on tighter the harder Kiko tries to escape, their grips like reinforced steel. Things start to look even more worrisome as a straggler runs in from around the corner, carrying a familiar looking sniper rifle.

"Hey, guys!" this girl shouts, waving the gun around like it's some toy, "Look what I found!"

"That's my gun," Kiko calls out, her voice drowned by the excited squees. A couple of the girls on the outer rim branch off to check out the rifle, examining it in great detail without any care for their safety. The one looking right inside the barrel would probably win a Darwin award. At least none of them seem to have figured out how to actually use the thing or there would be trouble. After a while, one of the girls still smothering Kiko finally gets an inspiration and breaks off to see the other girls.

"Hey," she starts, "That's Marle's 'gonnu'. Give it here."

"But I found it first," she says, resisting as the other girl starts yanking on it. A tug of war commences between the two, one pulling on the handle as the other pulls on the barrel. Kiko gets scared positively crapless as she hears a loud click emanate from their direction, its metallic clang ringing through the air. She then remembers why she shouldn't be so worried about their abuse of this gun. If these weren't signature weapons, that would have been a stupid and unnecessary death right there. After a few seconds, two of the other girls surrounding them push the first girl over, walking alongside the new holder as they bring the gun back. The rifle gets passed overhead to Kiko as the two girls holding her arms let go, allowing her to grab it as they lean in on her shoulders.

"What is that?" a few of the girls ask simultaneously, staring intently at the gun.

"This is my boomstick," Kiko responds as she starts collapsing it, not sure of where she heard that one before. Seems only appropriate. They just give a blank gaze for a few seconds before one finally speaks up.

"What is a boomstick?" a girl asks. It's nice to know that they really do seem to have no concept of guns here.

"I think that means she points it at stuff and it goes BOOM!" another girl answers, sending the crowd into more cheer. They keep trying to get closer to her, practically crawling over each other in hopes of that one stray touch. Kiko drops the gun as she tries to shove them away, but they all latch onto her arms in response. Kiko tries to walk through, but their weight starts bringing her closer to the ground. She realizes just how bad a predicament she's in now that she's at eye level.

"Hi, I'm Ruri," one girl starts, "Nice to meet you."

"I'm An-An," another says, giving a cutesy expression.

"I'm Ami," yet another one says.

"Please let me go," Kiko says, indignation starting to go through her. One of the girls suddenly pecks a kiss right on Kiko's lips, not lingering on it but worrying Kiko nonetheless.

"I kissed Yami by proxy!" the girl shouts triumphantly. Kiko realizes what's coming up when a bunch more start hunching in close to her face. She tries to duck down to avoid them, but that just ends with kisses all over the rest of her face. Kiko starts to feel panic go through her as she starts to wonder just how far they're willing to go. They are just going further and further without any heed for logic and will most likely end up doing something regrettable in the name of 'proxy'. Their excited hopping around are also worrying Kiko like nothing else. What if she falls down and they end up trampling her?

Just as Kiko starts to lose herself to this panic, she hears some guitar solo ring through the air. Everybody stops in their tracks, mesmerized by the sound. Their grip loosens as they start to wander towards the source, slowly abandoning Kiko to her own devices. Kiko eventually falls to the ground as the last of the girls lets go, following the same melodic trance as the others with a zombie gait. After they all get away, Sora runs in with an expression of deep concern on his face.

"Are you okay?!" Sora asks, helping Kiko back onto her feet.

"I think I am," Kiko responds, wiping at the sticky parts of her face. They didn't seem to be wearing lipstick, but it certainly still feels like it.

"How did you survive that?" Sora asks.

"I guess someone is leading them away with their music or something," Kiko responds.

"No, how did you survive that fall?" Sora asks.

"Oh," Kiko responds, unsure of how she could have forgotten about that, "Yami caught me."

"Really?" Sora asks, disbelief in his voice.

"Yeah," Kiko responds.

"Did you get him to join us?" Sora asks, looking around to try to find the young boy.

"...crap," Kiko responds, "I'm so sorry, I forgot all about that. It just left my mind when he cured me."

"I guess that answers my other question," Sora starts, picking up the collapsed square of rifle from the ground nearby, "Well, no harm done. We know he's somewhere on this planet, at least. Do you want to just go rest for now?"

"No," Kiko responds.

"You're sure?" Sora asks, "You kind of fell out of a helicopter. That would make anyone feel like crap."

"It's my fault we lost Yami," Kiko responds, "I'm sorry. I need to go along to make it up."

"You're sure you're fine?" Sora asks, "Really, it's no problem."

"I insist I go along," Kiko responds. She really does need to go along with this plan if she wants to atone for her crimes. Riku won't be happy if the news he gets is of her losing Yami and sitting in a hotel while Sora does all the work. She needs to do something heroic if she wants to prove herself worthy of being his girlfriend.

"Sure," Sora responds, "Anything for you."


	46. The Direct Approach

And so, Sora and Kiko set off on their mission. Defeat the bad guys and save the world at the whim of a large corporation. Gotta love it. Mr. Le Bon seems to be pretty paranoid about his record collection, with a sewer entrance installed to a seemingly innocuous warehouse near the middle of the pier and everything. Sora and Kiko unfortunately have to go through a couple miles of cramped waste tunnels, the smell making poor Kiko want to vomit every step of the journey. She proves strong, however, and she still makes it through to the end with her stomach contents intact. Sora and Kiko stop just one turn away from the hidden door by the water purifiers. It's about the only place in the system that doesn't smell rank.

"Okay," Sora starts, "Are you sure you want to go through with this?"

"Of course I do," Kiko responds, annoyed, "Why do you keep asking that?"

"Well," Sora starts, "Your skill set isn't really for straight up combat. I'm just worried you'll hurt yourself."

"I'm fine," Kiko responds.

"Tell you what," Sora starts, "I want you to hang back a little. Stay out of sight and work behind the action. There will be Heartless back there and it would help a lot to not have to think about them."

"That's not very heroic," Kiko responds.

"It's what you signed up for," Sora retorts, "Anyway, I'll take point. Just follow my lead until I figure out your operating zone. Ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," Kiko says, trying to be as enthusiastic as possible.

"Let's start," Sora says, walking to the door. Kiko follows behind, going past the door, up the ladder, and into some small, dark room. Sora casts a spell that maintains a small fireball the end of his keyblade, lighting the room up to reveal the usual trappings of a broom closet. It doesn't even have a light fixture anywhere, probably to dispel any notion that someone should be inside for any period of time. Sora makes a hand gesture to Kiko, waving to the other side of the room. Kiko takes a position with her back flat against the wall as Sora desummons his keyblade and cracks the door. He looks around for a few seconds before making some type of odd gesture to Kiko. She tries to figure out what he's trying to outline in the air. Does he want her to go around a thin object or something? After a few tries, he closes the door and walks over.

"I need one of your knives," Sora whispers.

"Oh," Kiko responds, pulling one out and handing it over. Sora cracks the door again and holds the knife out, staring intently at it. After a few seconds, he motions Kiko over to his side. As she gets behind him, he quickly opens the door and quietly hops out. After taking a position with his back against the nearby industrial storage shelf, he motions Kiko over to him. This warehouse seems so completely mundane, with unpainted white walls and the usual steel girder ribcage. These shelves are pretty interesting, made of some thick steel with diagonally grated backs to the shelves and big spheres keeping them off the ground. Their arrangement is not completely straightforward, with the three arranged perpendicular to the right of this one before another row parallel to the first. She isn't quite sure how big the place is, but it doesn't seem too exceptional.

Sora quietly strides to the other side of the shelf near the closest wall, motioning Kiko over as he does a knife reflection glance around the corner. Another hand motion and Kiko follows Sora around the corner. Looks like there are two more shelves parallel to the prior one, giving this warehouse a three by three arrangement on this side. There's probably another three parallel on that other side, since this place has some symmetry to it. Kiko follows Sora as he dives from hiding place to hiding place, constantly aware of his surroundings. Makes Kiko feel pretty inferior if even Sora can do this better than her and he's more of an open battle grunt compared to her specialist training. Damn that lack of magic.

Kiko tries to keep up as Sora swiftly dives around the corner of the last shelf, making just a bit more noise than she really should. It doesn't even seem like there's anybody here to begin with, so it's probably not that important to maintain any stealth. Sora is already on the other side of the shelf when Kiko turns the corner, glancing back to check up on her. Kiko gets right behind him as he hops over to the next hiding place by a perpendicular shelf, glancing around again. Kiko follows suit as he hops forward another spot, holding his hand up to signify a stop. Kiko stands there, back to the shelf as she wonders what she's supposed to do. Is she supposed to just wait here?

With a sudden crack and a loud hum, the huge sliding door to their side starts to open. As light pours in from under the threshold, Kiko looks to Sora to find him ducking into his shelf. Without much of an option, Kiko quickly dives onto her belly and rolls into her own shelf. A quick glance reveals a bunch of boxes with just enough space for Kiko to fit behind. A tight squeeze, but it keeps her out of sight.

"What the..." a female voice identified as the attacker from earlier says.

"Relax, everybody," an all too familiar voice shouts in, "I'm not some DEA narc here to crack down on you. If you look at me, you'll see I'm quite unarmed." Kiko recognizes it as none other than Simon Le Bon, the man that sent her and Sora out here in the first place. What the hell is he doing here?

"How did you know where you'd find me?" the scientist asks, her footsteps approaching Kiko's aisle.

"Oh, I wasn't looking for you," Simon continues, "It's just my warehouse and I'm kind of attached to the contents of it."

"What do you want?" the scientist asks, walking past Kiko's position. At least she didn't seem to detect her.

"I've been turning a blind eye to this for a long time now," Simon starts, "I won't beat around the bush. I know you're doing something very illegal involving the Heartless and dangerous chemicals. You don't have to hide that from me. I flat out don't care what you're doing here, though. I'm an executive, so I appreciate the need to break the law at times. What I do care about, however, are the unreleased albums sitting in some of the boxes. You don't need to apologize about accidentally taking them when you appropriated this building. You probably just saw an unlicensed but contractually unavailable warehouse and guessed it would be a good place to move in."

"Is that why you came here?" the scientist asks.

"Pretty much," Simon continues, "May I have my albums back?"

"Why should I help you?" the scientist asks, "I don't see why it should matter to me. You interrupt my important, delicate research because I have your album collection? Just go away before my bosses get back. They aren't anywhere near as sympathetic as I am."

"Look," Simon starts, "As a businessman, I can't just let you keep my assets. They are much too important for me to sign off as a loss. My current stock is running thin and I've even had to release the sewage overflow like Don Johnson. Tomorrow, I have to announce the upcoming catalog and I need my albums. I don't lie to the press and I always make good on my promises. There are two ways we can do this. Either you just give them to me now and I leave you and this warehouse forever or I call the police and round up some heroes. I would rather not do the latter, since the ensuing mayhem would probably destroy at least half of my stock, but it's better than nothing. I'd much rather prefer to just do this the clean way where we can all be happy. What do you say?"

"Hmm..." the scientist starts, "I can't imagine my bosses would be happy if I let you walk away with anything. They aren't the nicest people in the world."

"I could talk with them," Simon offers.

"I'll do it," the scientist says, irritated but sincere, "How do you intend to move this stuff?"

"I have a robot crew with me," Simon starts, "Just sit back and relax. I'll be gone in two minutes and you will never see me again."

"Make it less," the scientist orders, walking off swiftly. Kiko lies there wondering what was even the point of Simon hiring Sora to clean this place out. This is just stupid and unnecessary beyond belief. Kiko starts to recoil at the grating sound of steel grinding steel on either side of her. Probably the shelves being moved since the sound is going away towards the door, but maybe it's those robots. After a gap of a few seconds with relative silence, the shelf across from Kiko starts sliding in towards her. While it seems like nothing noteworthy at first, she realizes just a little too late that it's going to cage her in. Without much recourse, the two shelves slam together with a painful shudder. At least she can see Sora through the grate holes.

"Sora, what's going on?" Kiko asks in as quiet a voice as possible. Sora holds his finger in front of his lips and gives Kiko a disappointed look. After some more metallic grinding that feels like someone stabbing her ears, that sliding and hum of the big door comes back.

"Have fun," Simon shouts as the door closes. Sora points towards the back of the building, crawling over towards it. Kiko follows suit, getting right up to the barrier. Through those tiny holes, she gets a good view of the rest of the base. On each side wall, there are big glass tubes with bubbling neon liquids attached to a rectangular machine. On the far wall, there's a big computer console with a giant screen displaying all sorts of data. Wireframe models linking orbs, double helix patterns, and a constant text dump are the order of the day. The female scientist is walking around with a clipboard, moving from console to console as she casually taps into the embedded keyboards.

"Did you... what the hell?!" shouts a familiar female voice from out of sight. Kiko isn't too surprised that Mint would be involved in something like this. Maleficent seems to be the only decent villain left in this universe.

"What are you-" the scientist asks, getting cut off as Mint grabs her hair and yanks backwards as she shoves down into her shoulder.

"You let somebody in here!" Mint shouts right into the scientist's ear, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"I'm sorry!" the scientist says, "I didn't have a choice!"

"How did you not have a choice?!" Mint shouts, "You have an army of your own personally trained Heartless at your command!"

"He just wanted his records," the scientist starts, "He said he'd go away if I just gave them back."

"You let him walk away with his stuff?!" Mint yells, "What's stopping him from selling us out now?! Huh?! Did you even think of that when you let him walk out?!"

"He seemed like he was telling the truth," the scientist begs, "He suggested he is a corrupt executive. He didn't even offer me any money."

"You have been a horrible housekeeper," Mint starts, "And horrible housekeepers get the rats."

"No!" the scientist shouts as Mint starts dragging her towards the shelves, tears flowing down her terrified face, "Anything but the rats!"

"Leave the poor woman alone," a familiar British voice from out of sight comments.

"What?" Mint says, stopping in her tracks.

"We need the esteemed Doctor Goldwater to be in a proper mental state," Maleficent starts, walking within Kiko's line of view, "She's not much use to us as a stammering shell of a person."

"She let somebody come inside and walk away!" Mint says in a very irritated tone, "She doomed our base! How is this not worthy of punishment?!"

"Our presence on this planet is no longer required," Maleficent states. Mint's face suddenly goes from vengeful to angrily curious. She tosses Goldwater aside, walking over to Maleficent.

"Did you find her, mistress?" Mint asks.

"See for yourself, my apprentice," Maleficent says, motioning to something just out of Kiko's view. Mint looks on with awe as something gets carried over by that brass-clad cyborg. Kiko sees some type of big three sided glass prism with black support beams at the edges, the structure going up about six feet. Within the foggy green glass is a young girl in a black dress. Not much else can be made of this image, but Kiko feels this intense feeling of longing and solitude going through her as she looks at the girl. With a sudden flash, images of chaos and destruction flicker past her eyes, all with the vague image of a girl in black watching. People scream in horror as buildings burn, explosions devastating the landscape. As the planet starts to break apart into lava streamed chunks of ore, the girl turns around with a look of pure sorrow on her face and says two words in a direct, haunting voice that pierces through Kiko's very soul.

_"Help me."_

Kiko's vision zooms out from this scene, a bright flash bringing her back to the present.

"What was..." Kiko whispers, stopping as Sora gives her the hush signal.

"Ah, Cenari," Maleficent starts, "Impeccable timing."

"Is this... the empress?!" Cenari asks, that same raspy tone punctuated by genuine shock.

"Is she?" Maleficent asks.

"It is her," Cenari continues, "There's no mistaking it. I sense the presence around me. That corruption to everything she touches, that smell of Royal Canadian permeating through the air. She burns like the sun, yet I can't look away."

"A leap forward in our-" Maleficent starts.

"But it can't be her," Cenari says, holding his hand against the glass, "Oh, no, it simply cannot be. The real empress is so phony and always surrounded. She would not be so alone, so plain, so isolated. She could not orchestrate something so grand as someone so powerless."

"So you will take no issue with releasing her?" Maleficent asks.

"We must destroy her," Cenari starts in a bold tone, "We cannot take this risk. If she escapes, she will destroy us. She will burn our horizons. She will not rest until she is the goddess of a shrinking universe. Make no mistake."

With that, Cenari takes a few steps back and holds his arm out at the glass prism. Scraps of metal from all around his suit starts moving around, reforming around his outstretched arm. The metal on Cenari's suit forms to become a rough hewn gun of some kind, red energy accumulating into a ball at the tip. Mint starts to move in, but stops when Maleficent holds her arm up. As the sphere of energy builds up to a crescendo, it implodes on itself before shooting out as a sustained beam. This glowing red line of death bounces right off the glass, travelling just above Cenari's head and causing an explosion somewhere in the ceiling. Loud clangs emanate as falling chunks shake the shelves, the warehouse becoming quite a bit more illuminated. Cenari stares at the arm blaster, tilting it slightly back and forth as he tries to figure out what happened.

"What _is_ this?" Cenari asks, incredulous.

"Do you not know who this is?" Maleficent asks, "She's the great bane of the ancients. Older than any mere mortal, older than the Heartless, older than even me. She has been lying in this cage for untold millennia, waiting for her chance to rise again."

"Secrets locked up and carried through the centuries," Cenari remarks, the cannon on his arm deconstructing back into his suit, "Careless ancestors leaving their problems for their children..."

"Wait here," Sora whispers, taking Kiko off guard and nearly causing her to bump her head. She turns to see him roll off the side of the shelf and stand up, dusting himself off and drawing his keyblade. Kiko looks back to the group of villains to find the mood has turned quite dour at this intrusion. Mint and Cenari are staring daggers at Sora, Mondale is just watching with a battle-ready stance, Maleficent appears more apathetic than anything, and Goldwater looks genuinely scared.

"See?!" Mint shouts into Goldwater's ear while yanking on her hair, "Your stupidity brought Sora right to us!"

"Ah, Sora," Maleficent starts, "It's been a while."

"Not nearly long enough, Maleficent," Sora responds, emphasizing the last word with a tone of hatred.

"Pity," Maleficent starts, "I would have preferred your comrade in arms. I don't suppose you would be willing to go fetch him for me?"

"You're real sick," Sora starts, "Is this your new set of lackeys in your bid for domination? Can't you just realize that you'll never win no matter how many times you try?"

"I don't see this conversation going anywhere useful," Maleficent remarks, "Apprentice, Mondale, dispose of this urchin."

"Gladly," Mint says, tossing Goldwater aside as she takes a ready stance. It's quite the showdown here, with Mint and Mondale on one side waiting for that decisive first move. Kiko always kind of imagined that the villains are always supposed to attack immediately upon given the order, but these ones are just a little too smart for that. Sora doesn't seem to know what he should do here. He's faced with two presumably high powered thugs and doesn't seem to have any idea what to expect of either. For all he knows, the cyborg is just a vaguely human clock and the girl in green can make grass grow.

"Guys," Goldwater starts in a really concerned voice as she stands up, "Please don't fight in-"

With a sudden bolt of lightning, Mondale leaves behind a blur leading right towards Sora but no visible trace of the man himself remains. As Sora tries to figure out what just happened, another flash reveals the cyborg punching into his gut at point blank range. As Sora gets launched back in a painful display of random electrical spasms, he recovers his control and tilts in with his keyblade in front. Just as he lands, Mondale does another lightning dash only to be blocked by Sora. Mondale starts to throw punches in rapid succession, Sora parrying each with his keyblade. One stray miss with too much of a follow through leaves Mondale staggering forward as Sora cleaves into his right side while running past. Sparks shoot out as the cyborg starts to topple onto his knees.

Just as Sora was about to stab right into the sub-human beast's back, he quickly shifts his focus over to the new attacker. He locks blades with the aggressive green-clad girl, staring into her eyes as she bears in on him. Such fierce determination on her part even when fighting the legendary hero of the universe. Sora leaps back, slicing right through the crystalline blade as Mint tries to do a follow up slice. Unfettered, she dissolves the blade and sends a stream of green crystalline spikes through the floor towards him. Sora, realizing the intent of his opponent, thrusts downwards with his keyblade and bounces himself off of the ground. As he travels through the air, he sends an easily deflected fireball from his keyblade directly at Mint.

As Sora lands somewhere out of Kiko's view, Mondale starts to recover from his injury. Electricity arcs all around his wound, with metal shifting around and patching over the gaping wound. As it finishes, he joins Mint as they run out of Kiko's sight, the sound of something slicing through the sliding door emanating from behind. Maleficent makes a tsking sound as she walks over to the girl in the box.

"We need to depart this vile planet immediately," Maleficent starts, "Sora has never willfully worked alone. A boy like him is much too needy to ever be truly unaccompanied. Even now, we must expect King Mickey's sycophantic goons to be approaching. Goldwater, Cenari, load up what you can and ready the ship."

Maleficent watches with bored disinterest as Goldwater summons forth a group of Heartless and Cenari wanders out of sight. Some more pointing gestures from the scientist sends the Heartless around to start gathering up the scientific equipment. Kiko realizes that she really has to do something. It would be irresponsible of her to let these villains get away with something as dangerous as this girl. The question is how to get out of this makeshift cage? If it took friggin' robots to move these things, what chance does she have? Well, no point just sitting there and wondering about it. Kiko maneuvers herself into a crouching position and starts pushing at the other shelf with her feet. To her surprise, it does move... but at a glacial pace. Kiko strains at she tries to get just enough of a crack to slip through.

After a minute of pushing with the veins in her head feeling ready to pop, she finally gets a crack she feels large enough for her. A glance outside shows the capsule being pushed through a door as Maleficent walks towards a different exit. Not much time to make a difference here. Kiko shoves her way through the minuscule opening, somersaulting on the ground and pushing herself onto her feet. As she runs towards the door with as much grace and stealth as she can muster, she notices Maleficent starting to turn slowly while looking over her shoulder. Kiko pulls out one of her guns and fires a bullet, her target already dissipating into black smoke before she even pulls the trigger. Good enough for now, at least. All Kiko has to do is simply be much too fast for that undying fiend to catch up. Kiko runs to the door, ready to bash through and stop whatever diabolical plan is in store.


	47. OSHA Approved

Adrenaline pumping through her veins, Kiko bashes through the exit with her shoulder. Just as the door gives way, that dreadful flash goes by her eyes and she finds herself looking around for the reason. Just to her right, she locates an incoming flask of some clear liquid just a bit too close for her to react. The glass shatters into a thousand pieces on her skin, the lacerations proving to be the least painful part as her skin burns and melts at a fast rate. With another flash, she finds herself back at the door as her momentum carries her through. Too late to figure out a new way through, but still a good head start. A quick glance reveals the scientist finishing her overhead toss of the chemicals, not giving Kiko nearly enough time to dodge to the side reliably. Without much of an option, she drops the gun and quickly but gently grabs the flask with both hands.

"Wow," Goldwater muses, staring at Kiko with a mildly surprised expression. It seems she is almost packed and ready on her open canvas flat bed truck, the computer equipment strapped down and the girl in the box being loaded up by some of those club wielding giants. With her hands full and time to act vanishing a lot faster than she ever expected, she gets an idea. These chemicals seem pretty strong, so why not use them to her advantage? With a wide overhead hurl, she tosses the tube right at the glorified time capsule. Even if they don't destroy her, at least they'll prevent her from being loaded and probably render the truck useless. With a perturbed but focused expression, Goldwater summons a Knight and commands it to leap right into the path of the improvised molotov cocktail in one fell swoop. Predictably, the flask shatters on its midsection and both Heartless and chemicals drop to the ground, dissolving into the pavement in a searing heap of blackened ash.

Not missing a beat, Kiko pulls out her second handgun and aims for the scientist. Nobody throws some type of acid at her and gets away with it, after all. Even before she has her gun level, two of the red giants take up positions in front with clubs held vertical. How nice of them to act as bodyguards, but they're only going to be a delay of maybe two seconds. A couple shots aimed at the legs curve right into the club and deflect harmlessly, leaving Kiko surprised and without a plan. The enemy is going to escape with that girl and probably open a whole lot of whup-ass onto the universe if she doesn't do something. Thinking quickly, Kiko turns and fires some bullets at the red giants near the back of the truck. To her dismay, they finish their loading just as the waves of light consume them. One bullet per giant isn't fast enough, apparently. The two red giants defending the scientist start walking towards Kiko, their clubs at the ready.

"Please just run away before you get hurt," Goldwater says in a perfunctory manner, turning the ignition and driving off. As the truck enters Kiko's view, she starts firing shots at the driver. Unfortunately, the doctor was expecting it and counters by ducking under the steering column and swerving around a corner. So much for that plan. With the red giants bearing in, Kiko thinks hard about her options. There has to be something around here she can use. There's no reason to believe there would only be one single truck. The backlot of this warehouse seems extraordinarily decrepit and battered for a building this important, though. Maybe this whole section of town is abandoned?

Shaking her distraction, Kiko spots a nearby open canvas SUV just past the red giants. Convenient. As Kiko starts trying to figure out a way past the monsters, one of them springs forward and swings its club at her. Kiko just barely dodges underneath, narrowly stopping mere centimeters away from the downward smash of the other. Its club embedded and body wide open, Kiko fires a pair of bullets into its chest. The giant dissolves into white nearly immediately. Certainly an improvement.

With one down and one to go, Kiko evades the incoming lateral swipe with a leaping roll. As she spins on the ground and starts to stand up, she's surprised to find the club bearing down on her from above. Quickly performing a crouching hop to a side, Kiko tries to fire a shot only to find the giant suddenly beginning a sideways swing. She goes into a prone position, starting to get up but dropping back down to avoid another swing. Damn agile thing. As it starts twirling its club behind, Kiko begins to take the opportunity to shoot it only to get the bright flash of doom. With a sudden whoosh, the giant drives the club right through the ground and splatters Kiko's lower half. Another flash and Kiko does the biggest jump she can, narrowly dodging the weapon as she fires a round into the creature's chest. The dreaded click of failure prevents a follow up shot, leaving the creature still dying from the spreading light but more enraged than ever.

Kiko trips as the giant retracts its club from under her feet, the club already poised for vertical smash as she hits the ground. As it smashes downwards, Kiko rolls to the side just to end up having to roll right back to avoid the very rapid successive swing. Thinking quickly, Kiko shoves on part of the broken pavement to slide herself away from the incoming smash. Pushing herself off the ground with a single hand and flipping onto her feet, she starts running towards the vehicle as heavy stomps pursue her. She jumps over the door and drops into the driver seat, happy to find the keys sitting in the ignition. How careless. A glance back reveals the giant finishing its fade from existence with its club held high, the oversized weapon clattering to the ground loudly. Good to have that out of the way.

With a turn of the keys, the very loud engine starts its clattering rumble. A new challenge now faces Kiko that worries her a lot more than any Heartless: driving a car. She only had her driver's permit a couple months before all of this and it certainly didn't extend outside of Hometown. Even if it did, it's not like she has her old wallet to show the cops. Thinking back, all she can really remember in detail is her mom having to pull the parking brake in order to stop a rear end collision. However, now isn't the time to reflect on such trivialities. At least this car seems similar to that Toyota Avalon she used to practice with, so this should be straightforward. A shift to drive and stomp on the gas pedal causes it to barrel off just a little too fast, nearly missing the turn. Stomping the brake and turning the wheel just a little too fast causes her to skid across with a painful screech and a worrisome tilt. Well, better than her first time behind the wheel, at least.

Kiko's worries about being too late to stop the scientist are laid to rest with a glance way down the line of warehouses. About a kilometer and a half away, that truck is starting its ascent on a highway ramp. It doesn't seem like the fastest vehicle in the world, so it shouldn't be too hard to catch up. Kiko stomps on the gas, barreling off at a seemingly breakneck speed towards the ramp. She passes by the battle royale of Sora versus the forces of evil, barely even registering what was going on as she drove by. The electricity and flashes of green probably mean that he hasn't taken either of them down just yet. As much as Kiko would like to help to earn some points with Riku, she has more pressing matters and Sora should be fine if he truly saved the universe a couple times. Less than a minute later, Kiko passes by the rubble of several warning signs as she starts her climb onto the ramp. With all the grace of a new driver, she accidentally side swipes on the guard rail and sends sparks flying as she bounces back and forth. Well, she already technically stole this car, so it's not like she needs to care about the condition.

Kiko gets up to the abandoned highway, narrowly avoiding the center strip of lamp posts as she merges. Down the highway is that same truck, a little more than half a kilometer away and heading right to a dead end gap by some heavy duty construction equipment. How nice of her to corner herself like that. Kiko steps on the gas harder, reaching back and pulling out her sniper rifle. It's time to dispense some indiscriminate justice and save the universe from the wrath of that nameless girl. To Kiko's surprise, the scientist drives right off the side. What a dumb thing for her to do. Maybe she had a heart attack from the stress? She's certainly old enough for it. Kiko continues driving towards the barrier, hoping to confirm the death of this horrible person and secure the capsule.

Suddenly, a gigantic space ship emerges from the gap. Really gigantic. She can barely even see the truck inside the open loading bay and the whole ship takes up the entire width of her peripheral vision. The ship seems just like Cenari himself, bent, battered, bleached, burnt, and broken. The whole thing seems cobbled together from random bits and pieces, with no logical arrangement to its structure or even any resemblance of the laws of physics. In random places, the panels have decayed to show the frayed wiring and leaking sludge within. Red sparks stream randomly from each orifice, showering the area with its luminescent sparkles. Kiko's breath is taken away at the sight, unable to make heads nor tails of it or figure out what that glowing red thing in the docking bay is.

Another flash goes by, giving her that usual foreboding sense of doom. The red light inside the ship flickers away before turning into a giant laser beam aimed right at the car, a big surge of energy traveling through it into the bonnet. The front of the car crunches in and crushes Kiko's lower half, the force flipping the vehicle over and splattering the rest of Kiko against the pavement. Another flash and Kiko has a vague idea of what to do. She jumps out of her seat, hopping towards the back just as the beam hits. As the car flips over with her grabbing the lid of the trunk, she climbs over and slides onto the undercarriage just barely in time to avoid being squished. Kiko holds tight as the car comes to a sliding stop not too far away from the hovering space ship. She looks up to find the scientist watching, making a couple pointing gestures before the whole ship flies off. Nice of them not to bother with a follow up shot.

From all around, black ink starts swarming into a mound at the edge of the gap. The dark substance doesn't seem to be coming from any particular source, phasing into existence from random points within a dozen meters and sliming into a big quivering mass. The clot starts to gain a humanoid shape as it stands up, blackness dripping from its every pore. The creature before her starts to gain features as it stands at its full height of fifteen meters, the dripping blackness subsiding rapidly as texture starts to develop in its skin. Fish-like scales of a blackish turquoise emerge in patches on its chest, shoulders, and thighs, its hands and feet forming into sharp claws. A long tail thicker than either of its legs emerges, gaining scales of its own and ending in a floppy caudal fin. Its head smooths out and protrudes to resemble that of a shark, a thousand teeth glistening in a fearsome grimace. As it finishes forming, it gives a loud roar that reverberates for miles.

Kiko thinks about the dilemma she now faces. Here is a creature just a bit too large for her to realistically expect to defeat. It seems like it could crush her with just a glancing blow and she's low on bullets, but she can't just run away. What would Riku think? He'd probably consider her weak and shun her for being unworthy. Riku is not going to take a cowardly girlfriend. No, she must steel herself and figure out a way. Maybe she can smash it with the nearby wrecking ball crane? Find some explosives in one of the nearby trucks? Push it off the side with a nearby bulldozer? Perhaps she can just shoot it in the head and be done with it? Now that would be the day. Regardless, simply putting a cap in its brain is probably the most sensible approach at the moment. Kiko searches around for her sniper rifle, finding it lying about thirty meters away from the giant bipedal shark Heartless thingy. This is just going to be loads of fun.

Kiko starts on her forty meter approach, preparing for the creature's first move as it grabs the nearby bulldozer. The creature effortlessly flings the 20 ton machine at Kiko, narrowly missing her as she rolls underneath. The creature, nonplussed by this display of agility, scoops up the nearby dump truck and rolls it towards her. This is quite a bit of a harder thing to counter compared to the other truck, with no space to duck under it and not enough time to run around it. Thinking quickly, Kiko runs forward a little and assumes a prone position, the cargo box cupping over her harmlessly as it rolls on. Her gun nearly in her grasp, she makes a dash for it as the creature uproots some nearby lamp posts and crunches them together in its palm. With a leaping somersault over the rolled bundle of lighting fixtures, she grabs her gun and takes a quick shot at its head.

It would almost be a surprise to Kiko for the bullet to actually penetrate the skull. Too bad it isn't the case. The bullet deflects quite harmlessly off the thick skull plating, giving a bright flash consisting of way too many white sparks to possibly be real. The creature barely even notices the useless bullet as it starts to pull at the crane. It gives a loud roar of frustration as it strains to uproot this huge machine, inspiring Kiko with a plan. The whole point of armor on the outside is to prevent things from getting inside, so why not aim for the biggest hole there is?

Aiming for the mouth, Kiko watches and waits as the creature puts all its effort into this task. The sound of steel crunching intermixed with the twangs of cables snapped ring out with a painful percussion, loud clangs emanating at support beams burst. Kiko can almost see a look of determination in the creature's eyes in spite of the lack of distinct facial features. As the structure comes undone, the creature starts to give a triumphant roar. Just the opportunity Kiko was waiting for. A single shot travels through the air and bounces around in the mouth of the creature, startling it as white sparks pour out of its teeth. Kiko tries to follow it up, but gets the dreaded click of ruin. Why can't they just make a gun with infinite bullets like most video games?

Another bright flash alerts Kiko to yet another way she would fail. The creature swings the wrecking ball in a wide lateral motion, smashing it right into Kiko and breaking every bone in her body as it launches her into the water way down below. Another flash and Kiko resorts to her usual response of ducking for cover. The wrecking ball swings overhead, lightly rubbing her shoulders as it goes by. As Kiko throws away her useless rifle and starts to get up, another bright flash goes past her eyes. This time, the monster effortlessly follows through with a downwards smash of the wrecking ball right on top of Kiko. Another flash and Kiko quickly scrambles out of the way on her hands and knees, narrowly avoiding the ball by centimeters.

Kiko comes to the conclusion that in a state like this, she really has no choice but to escape. As much as she'd like to be the big hero and save the day, she can't exactly defeat this crap with only her knives and wits. Riku will just have to accept her limitations and be happy that this is a world of a thousand superheroes and she at least got away safely. She starts running away from the monster, instinctively rolling as a loudly whooshing truck flies overhead. More random objects fly by as Kiko runs away, each narrowly missing her as she reacts randomly. Nice to know that the precognition will tell her when she's totally screwed.

As she approaches the highway entrance ramp, she nearly craps her pants when a huge fireball blasts a good ten meters out of the ramp. Kiko turns to see the monster grinning like a loon at her, not even acting towards anything. Since when did Heartless have personalities, anyway? She always thought the expressions on them was just cosmetic like their colors and outfits. Without much of a choice, she makes a mad dash towards the exit ramp on the other side while keeping an eye on her steadfast assailant. The creature opens its mouth and sends another fireball at the exit ramp just before Kiko reaches it, completely demolishing it in a rain of fire. The creature then proceeds to stream fire in a line across the highway behind Kiko, leaving another large gap that she can't cross and trapping her with this monstrosity.

"**WHAT THE HELL?!**" Kiko shouts as she holds the back of her hands up at the creature, angry that it can just randomly pull a power out of its ass like that. The monster just stands there with a satisfied smirk on its face. What cruel deity created this thing? Did that scientist train it to enjoy killing people or something? After a couple seconds, the creature assumes its game face and starts to walk over to Kiko. Now she's completely screwed. Expecting it to smash her with the wrecking ball at any time, the monster is distracted as rocks smack into it harmlessly from out of sight.

"Marle!" a group of familiar feminine voices cheer from the direction of the entrance ramp. Kiko turns to see that same group of girls from before, all jumping and shouting in a rambunctious manner. The single alien girl is the only one that appears to be anywhere near calm, pumping her fist in the air as she chants Kiko's other fake name. What's really odd about this sight is the radiant white draconic type creature circling around, watching the giant shark monster with determination. Maybe it's one of their pets? Either way, at least they got her a short stay of execution.

"What the hell are you guys doing here?" Kiko asks towards the group. They just silently look around at each other for a little, confused about what the question could mean. They look like they almost want to ask why they shouldn't be there, but seem to decide to ignore the question and continuing their rooting.

"Go, go, Marle!" one of them cheers.

"Marle is the best!" another one encourages. Another one gives a rebel yell to punctuate that remark.

"Marle, Marle, she's our girl," yet another one starts, "If she can't do it, nobody can!"

The monster casually tosses aside its wrecking ball crane and uproots a lamp post, tossing it at the girls. The draconic thing headbutts it off course just before it can hit them, continuing its circular flight unimpeded. An impressive feat, to be sure. Kiko watches as more lamp posts get tossed at the cheering girls, feeling something welling up inside of her. She always viewed herself as someone completely worthless, but here is a group of people all in the line of fire just to encourage her. It's uplifting, something beautiful. She can't let these fans down by trying to escape. No, she has an obligation to the people as a member of the prestigious Radiant Garden Academy for Exceptional People. If she backs down now, she may as well just turn in her resignation and she's definitely not going to do that. How would she get Riku?

There has to be some way she can defeat this thing. Where there a will, there's always a way. Maybe she can make a weapon from something nearby? There is lots of debris all around, with jagged pieces of steel and the remains of tossed vehicles littering the ground. Spools of steel cable and piles of sandbags line the side walkways, buckets of some type of chalky material intermixed in between. What could she possibly make out of this useless stuff in any timely fashion? Kiko's attention is suddenly caught by the loud hissing noise of a canister near an open flame, exploding into a couple meter large fireball as the gas ignites. Good thing she wasn't standing there.

This gives Kiko an idea. She remembers that movie _Jaws_ and how the shark was defeated by an explosive gas canister in the mouth. It was pretty cool there, so why wouldn't it work here? Steven Spielberg kicks righteous ass, after all. These gas canisters seem volatile, but not too major or uncontrollable. She could probably detonate it in the thing's mouth and survive if she's at the right angle and gets away fast enough. But the first question is how can she detonate this? She wasted her last bullets on stupid crap, so she can't exactly shoot it like Roy Scheider. Maybe if she ties a burning object to the can? The only problem is there isn't anything really flammable and portable available... except her shirt. Well, it's a good thing she wears a bra or this would be quite a bit more humiliating. It's also pretty lucky she chose to wear a regular shirt instead of her mesh assassin outfit, but that just comes with expecting a nice vacation.

Kiko runs over to the fire, pulling her shirt off and shifting her grab to the end of a sleeve. To her dismay, the group of girls start cheering even harder with one giving a wolf whistle. Are they unaware that she's female or are they just that desperate for the attention of anybody of importance? Or maybe she just looks that good? These aren't really the best benchmark for taste, though, so she shouldn't get any high opinion of herself.

No time to waste thinking on such matters, though. She lightly dangles the shirt over the fire, a light flame starting to ignite within. Not wasting any time lest she burn herself, she runs over to a nearby canister and ties the shirt on to the bottom stand. This canister is pretty heavy and unwieldy, but at least she can still lift it with a single arm. With that out of the way, she now just has to figure out how to get on this abomination. There doesn't seem to be any usable rope nearby and it would just be suicide to try to hold onto its head directly. Another idea hits her from a lot closer than expected: why not use the harness? It's not like she really needs it any more now that all her guns are gone. Careful not to slide her brooch off her shoulder, she undoes the harness with her free hand and drops it to the ground. She pulls the two knives out with her feet, leaving them on the ground as she starts the next part of her plan.

The creature, having expended nearly all the nearby lamp posts, finally reaches the apex of its seething frustration. With a loud roar, it hops several meters ahead, grabs Kiko's demolished SUV, and hurls it right at the draconic thing. Stupidly, the flying creature tries to headbutt it only to get squished. The crowd of girls narrowly dodge to a side as the machine and its newly attached creature crash right beside them. The creature gives a triumphant roar, uprooting the last couple lamp posts and preparing its best softball pitch. Just before it got a chance to send it flying, Kiko grabs a knife and throws it right into the creatures leg. Not exactly the most effective of attacks, but it at least it distracted the creature's aim and got its attention.

"Eyes on me," Kiko says in a stern voice as she stares intently, putting the other knife between her teeth and looping the harness over her shoulder. She starts to get second doubts about this plan as the creature turns and reaches for its wrecking ball crane, thinking about all the ways she could die during this plan. Death by crushing, death by falling, death by explosion, death by chewing. The list is endless. Still, her precognition seems to want to keep her alive, so why doubt it?

The creature starts swinging its weapon relentlessly, smashing the ground apart as Kiko side dodges each swing. It's amazing how well she can do this if she just focuses on the task at hand and let her instincts guide her. Eventually, one overpowered wayward swing embeds itself pretty deep into the ground, delaying the creature's retraction just enough to facilitate this suicidal plan. Kiko grabs onto the chain with her free hand, riding as the creature yanks it back. Timing her jump very precisely, Kiko dives over the creature's head while lassoing onto its upper jaw with her harness. The centrifugal force swings her right onto the back of the creature's neck, the harness acting as a makeshift leash and tether.

As the creature starts randomly flailing around to try to get her off, Kiko starts using all the muscles in her body to try to pull the jaw up. She needs to get this creature's mouth open just enough to toss the improvised bomb inside. She feels the pain of her muscles straining to fight the powerful force of this jaw, the harness starting to dig into her hand. After what felt like an eternity, the creature unintentionally gives up as it gives an irritated roar. Kiko tosses the canister inside with all her might, letting go of the harness and pushing herself towards the ground. With every millisecond counting if she wants to survive this, Kiko grabs the knife out of her mouth. As she stabs into the creature's tail to slow her descent, she hears a loud hissing almost immediately followed up by a large explosion. She looks up to find the creature's head completely vaporized with a large cloud of black smoke rising from its place, inky blackness spewing from the new hole. Kiko lets herself fall to the ground as the creature starts to dissolve, a white light bursting from its skin. The creature explodes into a million sparks as a pinkish heart floats up from its epicenter, dissolving into nothingness. The crowd of girls goes wild.

Kiko wasn't even thinking about Uina's mission as the coral piece drops right in front of her, this one calling out to her with that same powerful urge to cradle it as closely as possible. Kiko's mind is a bit too strong for its influence, however, and it doesn't take too much effort to take the brooch off and touch it to the little piece of evil. Kiko breathes a sigh of relief as she stuffs the brooch into a pants pocket, happy to finally have a large kill to call her own. Riku can't deny her any more now that she has earned her right as a true hero. Finally, she has gone head to head with a true opponent and come out victorious beyond the shadow of a doubt. Not a mere regular Heartless, but one of the big, bad leaders. Maybe she caused a ton of property damage in the process, but she came up to a creature twenty times bigger than her and dominated it like nobody's business. She didn't even need a gun.

But the greater consequences of this day are much too dire to be ignored. Even though she destroyed a giant Heartless on her own, she still failed to stop that scientist from getting away with the person of mass destruction. What a damn failure. Kiko was the only person that could have stopped this disaster, but now, she's going to be remembered as history's biggest failure... or at least what little of history remains should that girl be released, anyway. Why didn't she try to take a shot from the warehouse alley? That truck was in plain view and she probably could have killed the scientist right there, but no, she had to give chase in a car when she can barely even drive. How stupid.

"Kiko, are you... holy crap!" Sora shouts from out of sight. Kiko doesn't bother to react as Sora runs up beside her.

"I failed," Kiko softly mutters.

"You failed?" Sora asks, "How did you fail? You killed a giant Heartless all on your own!"

"I let them get away with that girl," Kiko responds, "It was really stupid of me. I dropped one of my guns and wasted most of the bullets in the others. I chose to chase her in a car instead of just sniping her. Twice. I'm a freaking failure."

"You did fine, Kiko," Sora starts, picking up Kiko's knives and harness off the ground, "I didn't succeed in stopping my opponents from escaping, either. Maleficent recalled them for some reason. Honestly, though, I'm really impressed... what happened to your shirt?"

"I needed something to burn," Kiko responds, "You only just now noticed?"

"Well..." Sora says, shifting uncomfortably, "Let's report in."


	48. Ticket to Nowhere

And so, Kiko goes with Sora on another helicopter... well, the same helicopter as before, anyway. It never quite graced Kiko's notice before, but helicopters really bother her. Maybe it's the confined quarters, the proximity to the sharp spinning blades, or the fact that an engine failure would result in literally dropping out of the sky, but they just seem so unsafe. Airplanes can at least glide down in an emergency and possibly even land. What makes this trip bad, however, is that she has to be with that record company guy again. What's up with him, anyway? He doesn't even care to talk about his audacious move back at the warehouse. At least he's in a pretty good mood outside of this oversight.

"So, Kiko..." Simon says.

"What?" Kiko asks, annoyed. Can he not see that she's shirtless and singed? Does she look like she wants to talk?

"I've been thinking about the SLB line-up," Simon starts, "And I realized that I don't have any romantic pop. I know, it's really lame dreck and only old people care about that crap, but I'm running a business and I can't just cater to my own tastes. That said, I've narrowed the candidates down to Gloria Estefan and Cindi Lauper. Who do you think I should go with?"

"I don't know who they are," Kiko responds.

"...you really don't know who Gloria Estefan is?" Simon asks, "Big Latin pop sensation?"

"No," Kiko responds.

"Hmm..." Simon starts, "I guess I'll go with Cindi... so, is this your new look?"

"Huh?" Kiko responds. How can he possibly think this is intentional?

"I like it," Simon starts, "It has an Amazonian flair to it. Shows off your toned muscles in a way both scintillating and intimidating while keeping an alluring distance from your other attributes. You're a good looking girl, you know?"

"I'm fifteen," Kiko says in a curt tone.

"Yeah, you're right," Simon starts, "How inappropriate of me."

"Are you sure we can't stop to buy a shirt?" Kiko asks towards Sora.

"...huh?" Sora says, breaking out of what seems like a daydream.

"Why can't we stop to buy a shirt?" Kiko repeats.

"Professor Uina wants us as soon as possible," Sora responds, "And the closest store was several miles in the other direction."

"I can't be seen like this," Kiko starts, "What would they think?"

"I'm sure they'll understand that you needed to use it to kill that Heartless," Sora says, "Don't worry about it."

"This isn't the way a proper girl should look," Kiko continues, "I'm showing way too much skin and-" Kiko's monologue is interrupted as a black coat lands on her head.

"There you go," Simon starts, "If I know the grandmaster, he probably has a whole bunch of ugly military duds with him, so please change into them and give that back. It's kind of expensive even for someone like me."

"Um... thanks," Kiko says, pulling it off and examining it. Appears to be some black thick wool thing with pointy teeth for buttons. Lovely. Kiko slips it on, shifting around uncomfortably as she feels some harsh fabric scratch her skin. Well, at least it gets her skin out of sight. A glance over to Sora reveals the brown haired boy gazing dreamily out the window again. What could be going on in that mind of his? Hell, what could be going on in the mind of anybody who saved the universe twice with a whole bunch of heroic pitstops along the way?

"We're here," Simon announces. Kiko looks out the window to find what appears to be some ancient ceremonial ground nested on top of a forested hill. There is a long stairway leading past some type of wooden archway, opening up into a spacious tiled area. Other wooden buildings with red tiled roofs and beige-paneled sliding doors encircle the complex. One element that seems out of place is a picnic table at a far corner where Riku, Kairi, Chou, and a familiar red haired boy sitting around. Uina isn't too far away, motioning the helicopter down to some nearby alcove. With quite a bit more grace than Kiko is used to, the craft lands at its designated area.

"Welcome back," Uina says as Kiko steps off, "Interesting choice of outfit."

"Huh?" Kiko responds, remembering her decidedly uncool shirt, "Oh... do you have something else I can wear?"

"Before we mess around with that," Uina starts, "We need to debrief. Sora already told me what happened and who we're up against, so we can just skip to the point. This way, please."

Kiko and Sora follow as Uina leads them to the picnic table. For being the big hero of the moment, everybody seems rather disinterested in her. Maybe Sora just didn't tell them about her brave act of heroism against overwhelming odds? Kiko starts to move in towards the open seat next to Riku, taken aback as Sora deftly takes the position. Damn that intruder. The only seat left is right next to that damn alien girl. Why did Kiko have to involve herself with her in the first place? Things would be so much simpler now if she hadn't tried to be friendly with a non-human. Still, it would be rude to ask Sora to move for a selfish reason, so she takes her seat next to the pink thing. Uina stands at the end of the table, pulling a briefcase from somewhere underneath and fishing inside for something.

"Well," Uina starts, pulling out a stack of papers, "It seems the Lady of Sorrows, also known as the Dark Lady, also known as the Cosmic Destroyer, also known as the Bane of the Ancients, also known as the Planet Slayer, also known as Kuromeru Reifujin, also known as whatever the hell you want to call her because the only written contemporary records about her are ancient runes that can't be translated... ahem, has been discovered after some unspecified number of millennia. I kind of knew this day would eventually come when I found out about a great ancient evil being sealed away for future generations to deal with instead of just flat-out destroyed, but I can't criticize ancient morality. For all I know, they were really strict about 'thou shalt not kill'... yes, Riku?"

"Your point?" Riku asks in an impatient tone.

"The ancient precursors were jackasses," Uina says, "Anyway, the good news is we know where the first prism key is located. The bad news is our enemies carry this same information. Of course, this is only the natural result of being the biggest open secret amongst conspiracy theorists searching for the next Area 51, with even Interpedia getting an article on it. Classified is such an outdated term, but I digress. When we were at the temple last time, we didn't move the prism. Some crap about psionic flow keeping her from reaching out with her telepathy and urging people along stopped that. So, all we did was set up a bunch of homing beacons, rigged the front entrance with lots of traps, and got a few of the nearby planets to agree to a full-scale invasion should anyone try to capture it... yes, Riku?"

"Why are we dawdling?" Riku asks, "The most dangerous entity in the universe is out and we're rambling about this crap?"

"Good question," Uina starts, "We can't move out just yet. Their ship is still in orbit and we don't want to risk giving away our course of action. Of course, this is not mentioning the fact that they outgun us tremendously. No, we wait for them to get at least a light year away, then we take a roundabout path and approach the planet from the other side. Our advantage is their lack of knowledge on the inner workings of this temple. It shifts positions on a monthly basis in order to align with the other planets and right now, it's at this random forest out in the middle of a swamp wasteland. That planet always was a bit loopy, which is probably why it was chosen. Any questions before I continue?"

Kiko looks around to her compatriots at the table. Sora and Riku just seem sort of bored, as though they've done this countless times before and this isn't really worth their rapt attention. Kairi is just sitting there like a normal inattentive student, providing a stark contrast to Chou's unbreakable interest in Uina's every word. The real surprise is Yami, though. For someone just being brought along to test some theories about the new Heartless, he actually looks like he's enjoying all of this. Good for him. Uina glances at something inside his briefcase before dropping the stack of papers on the table.

"Well, anyway," Uina continues, sliding papers to Sora and Riku, "We really can't risk this girl getting out of the box, but we also can't really afford to start another major war of attrition. The solution, of course, is to misdirect. Back when we first found the temple, we got a lot of readings from the prism and made a rough duplicate. It doesn't have near as intricate an energy reading as the real thing and the runes don't line up correctly, but that's exactly what we want. It's close enough to satisfy them, yet far enough to not work. Anyway, the plan is quite simple. We stealth-fully drop a team to go in through the hidden entrance. They'll sneak in, bypass the security, swap the prisms, and sneak out. At the same time, we'll send someone to the front entrance in the usual smash and grab. There will obviously be a conflict and if I know Maleficent's tactics, she'll just cause a diversion while a lackey scoops up the prize."

"As for the teams..." Uina says, holding his finger up for a few seconds as he contemplates before starting his pointing, "Sora and Kiko, you'll go in back. Riku and Chou, you'll create a diversion. Any... oh, what is it now, Kiko?"

"Riku should go with me," Kiko blurts out. Uina gives an irritated scoff at the suggestion, walking over to Kiko and bending down to get at eye level.

"Look," Uina starts, "I'm not derailing this operation just because of your obsessive lu-"

"They want Riku's keyblade," Kiko interrupts, "He really shouldn't go up against them directly."

"...that's a more compelling reason that I expected," Uina says, standing back up, "Okay, Riku, Chou, and Kiko can go on the backdoor mission. Probably better to have a stronger force for the critical part, anyway. Sora, I trust you can handle the front line by yourself?"

"Of course," Sora says, giving a thumbs up.

"Excellent," Uina says, swapping the files between Sora and Riku, "Since they still haven't gotten far enough away, does anyone have anything they want to talk about?"

"I killed a giant Heartless," Kiko announces. The reactions are quite a bit more lukewarm than she expected, with Uina and Riku looking at her distrustfully while everyone else has a weak look of admiration. Where are the congratulations?

"Bravo," Uina says in a flat tone, checking inside his briefcase again, "Okay, they're out of range. Let's get started. Kiko, since you're the only one that ever has to prepare, feel free to go to the ship and gear up. Outfits are in the closet."

"Where's the ship?" Kiko asks.

"...figures you wouldn't remember that lecture," Uina comments, "Come with me."

Kiko rises up out of her chair and walks alongside Uina towards the big empty area. She really isn't sure how someone is supposed to know where the ship is while it's cloaked, what with it being, well, invisible. Isn't the whole point behind cloaking to obscure it from sight, anyway? Just as Uina's sudden stop takes Kiko off-guard, she hits her head smack dab on some hard invisible object.

"Ouch," Uina remarks dryly.

"How was I supposed to..." Kiko says, trailing off as she notices Uina pointing at the ground. Right where she hit some invisible object is a deep tread mark of some kind. Almost looks like a footprint. Now she remembers that class.

"Sometimes, design flaws open new opportunities," Uina says, getting a bit closer to Kiko for some whisper time, "Did you get the core from that Heartless?"

"Oh," Kiko says, reaching into her pocket.

"Don't take it out here," Uina says, lighting holding her hand down, "There's a box marked CCB-9 on my lab counter. Take any of the new brooches from there and leave your old one in the empty portion. After that, go change into a uniform and give me that shirt."

With that, Uina pushes into the invisible object, causing the cloaking field to distort just enough to see a landing gear with a conveniently placed control panel. A casual pair of button presses causes the ramp to gradually lower itself down. Since the ship isn't decloaking at all, it instead appears like a large hole in the sky is opening up as a slate of grated metal extends downwards. Kiko boards the ship, finding its layout pretty interesting. Instead of rows of seats, there are a couple tables with lab equipment. Lots and lots of brass everywhere, some in coils, some in cogs, some just in unrefined blocks. One of the tables has a disassembled robot with vials of clear liquid streaming through tubular lines into the machine. The next table over has those boxes he was talking about.

Kiko walks over to the table, rummaging around for the jewelry box. Most of them just have Uina's brass batons with such unimaginative names as 'Series VII Mark IV v.1.08'. Not even something like 'Detonator' or 'Ground Zero' or 'Kiss Your Ass Goodbye' something. It's not even like they're etched into the actual batons, with these cheap paper tags looped on with string. Kind of neglectful for something so important. Still, this gives Kiko an idea. Surely, he won't notice if one of these go missing. They're just haphazardly tossed into boxes together. Probably best to go for one of the earlier ones, though. From the Series VI Mark III series, she takes one labeled 'v.1.02'. Good enough for her.

After some more rummaging, she finally finds the 'CCB-9' box. Kiko fishes the brooch out of her pocket, getting a mild surprise as the area around her darkens. That brooch seems to be drawing the light out of the air around it, yet the gemstone itself still swirls with that vaguely purple black light. Looking into it, she feels that same sense of urge to embrace the emptiness and stamp out the light in her life. It's even more potent than ever, but Kiko's will is still much too strong to give in. She feels around for the fastener, unsnapping the brooch and quickly stuffing the creepy thing into the empty portion of the box. Emily grabs another brooch and quickly seals the box up before the influence can taint her any more.

Well, time to find the new clothes. 'Closet' is such a vague description, what with one of the walls consisting of nothing but closets. Kiko starts going down the line, opening each one as she tries to find the outfits. Lots of guns in one closet, terrain equipment in another, a couple full body hazard suits in yet another. It isn't until the last closet that Kiko finds the regular uniforms. One thing Kiko really can't stand about these things is their 'one size fits all' theory with lots of belts and fasteners. Not much she can really do about it, though. Quickly glancing around to make sure nobody is watching, she hastily changes into the green duds. Rather than fumble with trying to attach the brooch to her person, she stuffs it into a lower pants pocket. With everything set up, she walks back to the ramp.

"Um, professor?" Kiko calls out, "What should I do with the rest of my clothes?"

"Just hang them up in the closet," Uina says, holding his hand out. It takes Kiko a few seconds to remember the black wool shirt she had to borrow, tossing it into his hand.

"How did you know I borrowed this?" Kiko asks.

"I seriously doubt you'd pay 45,000 munny for a shirt that doesn't even fit," Uina remarks dryly, "Anyway, help yourself to some guns and rock climbing equipment. Pack light."

Kiko walks back inside, a bit miffed that she can't just go back to her friends. It's been at least a day since she last saw Riku and she's growing antsy. Why does the world have to keep her away from him? She just wants to melt into his arms and never let go. Well, no point thinking about it when she's going to go on a real mission with him. She can at last prove her worthiness.

With a cursory skip, she heads over to the gun closet. Uina certainly has been busy, with a large selection of brass plated firearms. The usual handguns and sniper rifle are here, but also some other types. There's a giant machine gun, a couple assault rifles, and some type she doesn't quite recognize. It looks like something in between a pistol and an assault rifle, capable of being held by one hand but with a second handle on its front and a shoulder strap. Now this is something she could see herself using. Kiko grabs one along with a bandolier, filling every single slot with an ammo clip. She's not going to let herself ever run out of ammo again. She's not quite sure what the red or white circle stickers represent, but a bullet is a bullet, right? With her weapon of choice settled, she walks over to the terrain equipment closet. Seems like all she really needs is a grappling hook on a rope and a piton hammer.

With that settled, Kiko walks back outside. A quick glance around reveals that Riku isn't at the table any more, with everybody talking about something in jovial spirits. Kiko couldn't really care less about them, so she looks around to find Riku by Uina and Simon near the helicopter. She runs over in as casual a manner as possible, catching the tail end of some conversation.

"...I guess I did buy all your albums," Uina says, "Sounds fun. I'll have to see what else I bought recently."

"If you didn't buy them..." Simon starts, "Who did?" Kiko decides against claiming credit and walks up beside Riku.

"Hi, Riku," Kiko says in an enthusiastic tone.

"Oh," Riku responds, turning his head slightly towards her, "Hi, Kiko." With that, Riku turns his attention back to Uina and Simon.

"...guess it doesn't matter that much," Simon says, "Well, it's been fun, Grandmaster, but I have a press conference to organize. Stop by sometime. The doors to SLB Records are always open to you."

"See you later," Uina says, giving a short, soft wave as Simon boards the helicopter.

"So, Riku," Kiko starts as the helicopter starts to lift off, "How was-"

"No time," Uina says, motioning Kiko and Riku to follow as he jogs towards the table, "Okay, everybody, we're leaving right now! Let's move!"

Kiko feels irritation bubbling inside her as she follows. Why did Uina have to cut her off like that? She finally has something worth talking to Riku about and he has to ruin it for her so casually. Well, not much she can do about it. She follows as everybody loads up into the ship, skipping past the main area and taking seats in the cockpit. This one is pretty interesting in its layout, with the two pilot's chairs missing in favor of a pair of tables with four chairs circling each. At each table is a seat with a laptop and what appears to be a pair of joysticks and a throttle lever connected by wires. Looks like something for a video game, almost. These positions are facing the more traditional giant screen. As Riku takes a seat, Kiko aggressive nudges past Sora and takes the seat next to him by a laptop. Victory at last.

"Um, Kiko..." Sora starts in an annoyed tone, "That's the co-pilot station."

"Oh, let her sit there," Uina says in an off-hand manner, "It's not like I ever got around to training you on this ship's controls."

Sora sighs as he takes the next seat over from Kiko. Maybe it was kind of rude to do that, but she's not going to let chance keep her away from Riku any more than she has to. Kiko ducks her head a little so she doesn't have to see Chou over the laptop on the opposite side of the table, turning to her future boyfriend and smiling. Riku points to the middle of the cockpit, diverting Kiko's attention to Uina standing in between the two tables.

"Okay, then," Uina starts in a deadpan manner, "On behalf of Uina Airlines, we welcome you to the 'Four Winds' Science Vessel. We thank you for choosing us as your spaceliner to the middle of nowhere. Our expected flight time is about eleven hours, give or take a few depending on the inaccuracy of our current star charts and the possibility of unrecorded all-devouring black holes having randomly sprouted on our path. We recommend that you stay seated for the entire duration of the flight with your harness on and your arms by your sides. Emergency exits are located at the rear ramp and lower deck, but if something life threatening actually happens, you're better off just making peace with your choice of deity. Should you need to use the lavatory near the rear of the spacecraft, we recommend holding it in until your captain offers his permission. Your in-flight meal will be whatever the school mandated of your diet and the in-flight movie will be whatever dreams you have during the recommended sleep period. Your captain for this flight will be the former Grandmaster Uina, who will also be filling the position of flight attendant and babysitter. We appreciate you choosing our spaceline and hope you have a pleasant flight."


	49. School Feudalism

Today is a boring day for newly promoted head cheerleader Dana Billett. It's such a drag to keep up such a prestigious image in a yuppie high school like Hometown High, what with every other half-wit prom queen wannabe trying so hard to knock her down. She even feels like she's falling victim to the Peter Principle with this forced promotion, what with the added responsibility of choreography and other leadership. At times, it would be so nice to just let it go and be a regular jackoff, but she can't do that. Someone has to dominate the social structure or else it would fall apart. Geeks fraternizing with jocks, the A/V club taking funding from the sports teams, freshmen not fearing to tread the hallways... it would be chaos. No, the school needs a strong, trendy individual like her to keep it in order. Woe be to the person who disrupts her vision... like the newspaper dork that has taken her table in the lunchroom.

"_**Excuse**_ _me_," Dana says, getting right behind him, "Who the _hell _do you think you are?!"

"Oh, hello, Dana," the geek starts, pulling out a notepad from a nearby bag, "May I inter-"

"**Get the hell out of my seat!**" Dana shouts. It's important to keep the volume high or else people might miss it. The population needs to see you clean up the trash.

"But this isn't-" the geek tries to start, interrupted as Dana yanks him up by his shoulder. He tries to resist, but she remembers her self-defense class and twists his arm behind him. Turning him around, Dana starts walking him to the door with the whole lunchroom watching in awed silence. See, this is how you create order. Even if you're part of the cheerleading team and turn down a couple dates a day, you're not going to get much respect if they think you're just another weak girl. Dana comes up to the closest exit, but to her dismay, somebody already closed it. She'll just have to improvise.

"Open the door, geek," Dana commands.

"But I'm perfectly in my rights to-" the geek protests. A good full body smash into the closed door shuts him up real fast.

"I said **open it****!**" Dana shouts right into his ear, pulling him back. He tries to squirm out of the armlock, but he's much too weak for Dana. She smashes him up against the door again, pulling him back for another. The geek finally complies, pulling the door open. Dana shoves him out, making sure to aim for that poetry club girl walking by. Probably the closest thing to sex either will ever get. With a slam of the door, Dana turns to face the applause and cheers of the lunchroom.

"Thank you, thank you," Dana says, taking a bow. As she walks by, she pushes aside some basketball player that looked like he was going to ask her out. Damn people need to realize that she's the one that tells people to date her, not the other way around. She flips the bird with an enthusiastic smile to that dick history teacher as she walks by. See, the teachers have even less power than the students. Sure, you can't physically fight them and they have the right to 'confiscate' whatever they want, but they always have to give it back and can never give any true retribution. They're government employees and they'd be put in prison if they so much as insulted her. Daddykins would see to it. Dana gets back to the table to find her three friends already there, ruffling through the bag that geek left behind.

"Hey, Dana," the brunette says.

"Hey, Jenny," Dana responds, sitting down, "Find any money in there?"

"Just some notebooks and stuff," Jenny says, "They even have actual notes. He's such a nerd, isn't he?"

"What should we do with it?" a red-headed girl asks, "Should we throw it away?"

"Oh, come _on_, Mary," Jenny says, "That's too easy."

"I know!" the black haired girl starts, "Let's put it on the flagpole."

"Always the flag pole with you, Tammy," Dana says, "Both your ideas suck. If we throw it away, he might still find it. All the other people just throw these things away as they get them. And if we put it on the flagpole, he'd just have to ask the janitor to get it down. Come on, where are your brains today?"

"What do _you_ think we should do with it?" Mary asks.

"Let's fill it with rocks and put it on the flagpole," Dana starts, pondering for a second before continuing, "Rocks and dog poop."

"But that's just-" Tammy says.

"But that's not all," Dana starts, "We'll slip the janitor a twenty to take the rest of the day off. Probably more than he even makes in a day. Damn Mexicans. The geek will have to call the fire department to get it down." Dana waits for somebody to try to say something before continuing. "But that's not all. I'm going to take this notebook of his and make somebody write in a big plan to destroy the school. It will have lots of guns and explosions and stuff, with a bunch of people we don't like all mentioned. Then we just turn this in to the lost and found. What do you guys think?"

The rest of the girls look a bit discomforted by this suggestion. Maybe they just don't realize the lengths one must go to maintain order, what with always just blindly following her orders instead of putting thought into the reasoning behind them. Their hesitation seems like weakness, so maybe Dana needs a new set of friends? There certainly are plenty of people with good potential that would love to be part of her inner circle.

"...isn't that going a little too far?" Tammy finally asks.

"Look," Dana starts, "Jason Vance has made things suck for so long. Always reporting these completely unfounded rumors about us. Stuff that he surely made up, right? We can't let him keep trying to ruin our completely clean reputation, _right_?"

"Why do we care?" Mary asks, "Only the geeks talk about these _completely made up_ rumors, anyway. We still get our choice of boy to buy us stuff and take us out. Even the geeks and girls wouldn't resist us... if we were to go that low."

"I don't care about the geeks," Dana says, "I don't even care about the teachers. I care about the parents. You see, these _unfounded rumors_ usually don't hurt because the school board doesn't want to do anything and the geeks are too scared to tell their parents. After all, they should know from grade school that telling your parents leads to more swirlees and locker stuffings. But that history teacher made me realize something. If this Vance kid not only keeps telling people but even putting them in an officially printed school newspaper, the parents will eventually start taking this seriously. Police, politicians, reporters, Michael Moore... who knows who would find out? That's why we need to stop Vance."

"Fine," Mary says. The others half-heartedly nod in agreement to this plan, proving that they might not be so weak after all.

"How was John last night?" Jenny asks. Dana really doesn't like how shallow these girls are at times. It would be nice if they had at least some variety in their conversation topics instead of just boys, clothes, and prestige. Kind of sucks how they don't even try to be smart, since they stupidly have the notion that being smart and being a geek is one and the same.

"Same old, same old," Dana responds, bored, "So, English was pretty interesting today."

"English?!" Tammy asks, "You aren't going geek on us, are you?"

"Of course not," Dana says, "So, I was just texting friends when I heard the teacher say 'rape'. It's not every day some teacher says that word outside of date rape week, so I just had to pay attention. I look up to see that she's actually talking about some _book_ called 'Rape Fantasies'. I swear, I'm not making this up."

"...really?" Jenny asks.

"Yeah," Dana continues, "So, she's talking about this book and how symbolic it is. Says it really deals with themes of control and how some men and women would actually enjoy being raped and crap. Not only that, some woman wrote this. I just couldn't believe how she was talking about all this with 13- and 14-year-olds in the class."

"When did you start caring about stuff like that?" Mary asks.

"It just got me to thinking," Dana starts, "A terrible thing, I know. What do you think men really want from women?"

"What do you mean?" Jenny asks, "They just want sex. Everybody knows that."

"I don't think that's what they really want," Dana starts, "If they did, they'd just stay with one girlfriend even if she cheats on them so long as she puts out. Yet, time and again, they sleep around while whining when their girlfriends do the same. No, what they really want is control. Sex is just a way to assert control. But that got me to thinking; why is rape so bad?"

"Well, duh," Tammy starts, "Some guy too ugly to get any on his own forcing you to have sex with him? Ew."

"What if he was good looking?" Dana asks, "Some guy like Jack Thomas."

"Oh, please," Tammy starts, "Why should he get anything if he can't even take me out for dinner?"

"See, that's the thing," Dana continues, "Again, it's the control. Maybe you'd like to have sex with him, but not right at that moment, not when he forces it like that, and certainly not before he pays his tribute."

"Do you have a point?" Jenny asks, "You start off with one point and it kind of became something else."

"What I'm trying to say, "Dana starts in a descending volume, motioning everybody to move in real close, "What if a girl took that control away from a guy?"

"What, you mean... oh, ew," Tammy whispers, shuddering. Everybody else seems equally shocked by this idea.

"Think about it," Dana says, smirking just a little, "We've always tried to find the best way to destroy those geeks. This would be our secret weapon."

"I can't believe you'd want to do... _that_," Mary whispers.

"Come on," Dana starts, "Nobody's ever thought of this idea before. You have to admit, it's kind of risky, kind of dangerous, but definitely kind of hot."

"I... guess..." Jenny says, blushing. Everyone at the table seems scared; not of this idea, but of themselves for that part that would enjoy it. It's nice to see who the real perverts are. They're easier to work with than a person that considers themselves of any moral purity.

Dana starts to say something, but she seems to become inaudible as a pale-skinned 5'2" girl approaches the table. While one could expect weird people in any school, there's something about this girl that seems truly off. In a setting where showing skin is all the rage, she wears a flowing black dress with a thin white trim and bell bottom sleeves. It almost feels like the dress is swallowing the girl in its all-consuming mass. Her raven black hair falls down completely straight, ending abruptly and completely evenly above her shoulders with a laser guided bang cut just above her eyebrows. Her face has this round shape to it, with eyes a shade of magenta providing the only hard color in her entire being. She doesn't just seem out of place; she seems almost alien. With her every step, time itself slows down towards a grinding halt.

"You have to admit," the girl in black starts, standing right beside the motionless cheerleaders, "Dana is something impressive. Why, in a different era and a different country, she could very well become a despot dictator for the ages."

The girl in black casually sits down in Dana's lap, wrapping her arm around her shoulders. She gives a wide smile as she rubs the chin of the motionless cheerleader, examining her face real close.

"Yet here she is," the girl in black continues, "Squandering her Machiavellian skills in a high school. Such a waste of extraordinary talents, don't you agree? Does she not realize that she's going to graduate in a year's time? That her influence will die once she walks off that podium with her scroll?"

The girl casually unwraps herself from Dana, getting up and walking through the still lunchroom with her arms extended.

"But then again," the girl in black continues, "None of these people will still be here. In a high school, all but the real failures will be gone by the fifth year, yet this same system has perpetuated itself for decades. Maybe Dana herself will be gone, but Dana is not a person so much as she is a role, a crown for people to wear. There was a Dana before her and there will be a Dana after her. Maybe one of these freshmen over there will take Dana's place once she's gone. And once they're gone, someone that's in junior high will have advanced to this position. Go enough generations and you can find the preschooler that won't share who will become the one taking away. All enforcing this rigid social structure and keeping their boot planted firmly on the faces of those with the misfortune to be different."

The girl stops in the middle of the center aisle, looking down at floor with a pensive expression. Something is bothering her, but she seems serene, almost peaceful. The world doesn't seem to bother her so much; she even looks like she could belong in this social structure. After a minute of calm contemplation, she holds a hand with fingers lax up in front of her face, clenching it into a fist as she stares upwards without moving her head. A look of rage boils through her eyes, the ground shaking around her.

"This world can't be saved," the girl starts, her voice determined, "This corrupt school isn't just a dark spot. It is training. Everywhere, the world celebrates similarity and punishes diversity with an iron fist. They hypocritically maintain a facade of equality as they run a draconian caste system that would put Genghis Khan to shame. There is no escape, no solution, no hope. You can either be the one crushed under the boot or the one wearing it. No, the only way to stop the system is to destroy it."

With that, dark energy starts flowing and swirling into the clenched fist of the girl. The whole area starts to drain of color as the energy builds up, the girl's dress billowing violently. As the color drains, a feeling of dread and despair start to permeate the very air. The glamor of the people in the room starts to decay, revealing monstrous visages too terrifying to describe as the building itself starts to corrode from the inside out. Suddenly, the roof and walls burst apart to reveal a black storm brewing overhead. The motionless monsters that could once be called human start swirling upwards into the funnel cloud of nothingness.

"The only thing that can save this world," the girl shouts, "is **MERCIFUL ANNIHILATION!**"


	50. Flow Inside the Spiral Tide

Kiko wakes with a sudden jolt, her clothing drenched with a cold, scratchy sweat. She can hardly believe what she just saw. Did that girl just invade her old world and destroy it without exerting any effort? Maybe it's a crappy place to live in, yet it's still quite a horror to behold. But that just can't be. There's no way she has been released this fast. It's only been maybe a couple hours and there's no reason to believe they're going to let her go destroy some different plane of reality so quickly. Obviously, she still has work to be done here. But that leads to a more chilling line of questioning: does this mean the forces of good are doomed to fail? Is Kiko and company going to lose this battle, with this plane destroyed and the girl seeking more to fuel her blood lust? What can be done if that's the case?

Breathing heavily, Kiko starts looking around the room. Everybody else is sound asleep in what appear to be pleasant dreams, with even the pink alien looking quite happy with something. How disappointing. She was hoping Riku would be awake so she could talk with him and get to know him better, but he's quite unavailable at the moment. It would probably be a bit selfish to wake him just because she had a nightmare, so she decides to leave him alone. It's around this point that she realizes she needs to go to the bathroom pretty badly. A quick glance around reveals that Uina isn't actually here. So much for his permission. He'll just have to understand that she really has to go.

Kiko gets out of her chair and and starts on what she thinks is the path to the bathroom. Uina said something about the rear, so it's probably in some obscure corner she won't find too easily. No matter. She could use a good stretch after sitting in that chair for so long. Kiko opens the door to find Uina working on that robot she saw earlier, carving up some of the brass blocks he has in stock. Well, that certainly simplifies things.

"Oh, hello, Kiko," Uina says, not even looking up, "Bad dream?"

"...sort of," Kiko responds. A new question comes to her: should she really tell him what it was about? Just the revelation that everyone is doomed to fail could be what tips the scales towards that outcome.

"...not going to tell me?" Uina asks, "I distinctly remember telling you to give me completely detailed recounts on _all_ your dreams."

"It wasn't anything special," Kiko remarks, "Dana... this cheerleader just shoved some guy out of the popular kids' lunchroom, then talked with her friends."

"...that's it?" Uina asks, glancing up from his work, "You sound like you saw a ghost."

"They were talking about... something..." Kiko says, faking a shudder and looking away. When all else fails, just look apprehensive.

"You don't have to say it to my face," Uina says, putting down his tools, "I'm guessing you forgot your notebook?"

"Yeah..." Kiko says. Uina rolls his eyes and pulls out a notepad with pen from his pants pocket.

"Just write everything you can remember in here," Uina says, walking over and handing the stuff to Kiko.

"Thanks," Kiko says. Crisis averted.

"So..." Uina starts, "What's with the gun?"

"Huh?" Kiko responds.

"You chose a submachine gun," Uina continues, "The Heckler and Koch MP5 knockoff. Why?"

"It seems like a good gun," Kiko starts, "It's like a big handgun that can hold lots of ammo. I don't want to ever run out again."

"Hence why you have a full bandolier," Uina comments dryly, "Do you even know how to use it?"

"I can figure it out," Kiko responds. If she remembers correctly, she just has to put a clip in and slide this thing back. A couple clicks and clacks later, she has what certainly feels like a loaded gun.

"Well, I guess I can sign off on this," Uina starts, "If all goes well, it's not like you're going to fire any of those bullets, anyway."

"Thank you," Kiko responds, starting to look around for the bathroom.

"I still can't let you go off without a secondary," Uina states, grabbing her knives from the nearby table, "Take these. There should be some holsters in the closet."

"Um... thanks," Kiko responds, taking the knives with her other hand. She doesn't understand why he's so insistent on this, but whatever. Stabby, stabby.

"Bathroom is to your left," Uina states, going back to his work.

**--**

The rest of the flight proves interminably boring for Kiko, what with Riku sleeping through the entire thing and no entertainment to speak of. For what looks like a gaming computer, the laptop is quite explicitly not a toy as she unfortunately found out. At least she didn't have any dream at all when she finally fell back asleep an eternity later. Now is not the time to think about that, though, since the operation is about to commence and she had a genius idea before she fell asleep.

"Hey, Yami," Kiko says, walking to the reclining red-headed boy.

"...Oh, hello, fellow hero," he responds, snapping out of a trance.

"So, I was wondering..." Kiko starts, unsure how to compose herself, "...I'm going on a dangerous mission."

"I wish you the best of luck," Yami responds, lightly grabbing her hand and giving a shake, "I'd go with you, but Uina-sensei wants me to stay here for tests. I hope they aren't too hard."

"I was kind of wondering if you could, well..." Kiko says, looking around to make sure everybody else is either asleep or absent, "...enchant me."

"...what?" Yami responds.

"Like last time," Kiko starts, "You know, you made me able-"

"I can't," Yami blurts out, looking away from Kiko in shame.

"Why not?" Kiko asks, feeling a little heartbroken at his refusal.

"You lost control last time," Yami explains, still looking away, "I only gave you one spell and you still lost control. It's a miracle you lived."

"But..." Kiko starts, "I need-"

"Kiko," Uina says from behind, "Stop badgering our guest of honor and get over here."

"Sorry," Yami says, keeping his gaze away from Kiko. Well, if he's going to be belligerent, there isn't much she can do. With a sigh, she walks towards the back of ship. Why did Yami spurn her so? Surely, that explosion was just a freak occurrence. Whatever. She probably doesn't need it, anyway. Kiko lines up next to Riku and Chou on the exit ramp, facing Uina as he looks over a clipboard.

"Okay, then," Uina starts, "We'll be going over the first drop point in about 90 seconds. Everyone has their weapons?"

"Check," everybody but Kiko responds in unison.

"Detox gum?" Uina says, ignoring Kiko's lack of response.

"Check," Kiko says in unison this time.

"Communicators?" Uina asks.

"Check," everybody says.

"Mission orders?" Uina asks.

"Check," everybody says. Uina walks over to Chou.

"Replacement prism?" Uina asks.

"Check," Chou responds, holding up the green duffel bag.

"Med kit?" Uina asks.

"Check," Chou responds, starting to take off the backpack. Uina holds up a flat palm and shakes his head in disapproval, stopping her. Kiko had never really noticed before, but Chou seems to always get custom uniforms that allow her back appendages to stick out. Why does she get the cool stuff?

"Okay, everybody," Uina continues, "I trust we're all well-rested, well-fed, and took care of our callings to mother nature. Not like you can't just go in the bushes, anyway. You have your orders. Let's move!"

With that, Kiko feels herself sinking as wind starts rustling through the ship. As everybody else pops in their gum, Kiko notices a really foul stench starting to fill the room. Smells like six year old eggs mixed with industrial chemicals. She certainly doesn't hesitate in taking the gum with that awaiting her outside. As the ship comes to an unsteady stop, Riku and Chou both duck down and crouch under the small crack with Kiko following behind. As she lands on the soft ground, a loud whoosh accompanied by sonic shockwaves swirl over her as the invisible ship departs.

Kiko looks around to see a desolate wasteland surrounding her. The air is filled with this noxious grey smog, tripping her gag senses and irritating her eyes. The overriding color all around is a greenish brown, the muddy ground moist and sinking with every second. The greenish mud is occasionally punctuated by spewing geysers surrounded by large rocks, worn down with age and covered with a green mold. In fact, the only thing that seems alive in this godforsaken place is that very same mold. There aren't even any insects here. The sound of ooze bubbling and gas spewing fill the air, giving this rhythm of sickness all around that nauseates Kiko to her stomach.

"Where are we going?" Kiko asks. Riku points towards this completely out of place forested hill a couple kilometers away. The layout of this region baffles her to no end. How is a place so toxic as this wasteland able to so suddenly give way to a dense forest? Surely, the toxins must carry in the wind. Kiko can't quite make out anything else about it with such a thick smog permeating the air.

"Let's go," Riku states, starting his forward slog through the treacherous terrain. Kiko follows behind, nearly tripping as her boot sticks to the ground. It's bad enough that she has to go to such a filthy place, but for it to not even be a straightforward walk is just a bit much to handle. Not much she can do about it but press on, though. Each step makes her feel weaker than the last, the smog invading her lungs with its pungent aroma and stinging corrosion. She only hopes this gum is working.

"Help!" Chou shouts out from behind with a huge amount of urgency and panic flooding through her voice. Kiko sighs as she smacks her forehead. What the hell is her problem? It's just sticky mud. Kiko turns around to find Chou knee deep in a more fluid portion of the muck and sinking at a reasonable clip. Every move Chou makes in her panic sinks her further down at a slow but alarming rate.

"Oh, crap," Kiko says calmly, starting to make her way back to Chou. Maybe she wouldn't be that disheartened by her death, but she can't exactly do nothing while Riku is watching. It doesn't help that she also has the replacement item, either. However, running in this type of setting would be a disaster waiting to happen, so Kiko walks as fast as her stability will let her. As Chou sinks to her waist, she starts screaming loudly while writhing wildly. Not very smart. Just as Kiko gets within a few paces of the alien, she feels the ground snap under her forward foot. As her foot gets submerged in some particularly sticky mud and her balance starts faltering, she feels Riku grab her around the chest. With a powerful yank against the incredible gravity of the mud, Riku casually spins Kiko around and tosses her like a rag doll onto the ground behind.

"Okay, Chou, calm down," Riku says, his attention focused squarely on Chou. What the hell was that about? How rude of him to just toss her away so carelessly.

"Riku, why-" Kiko starts angrily as she picks herself up, stopping as Riku holds the back of his hand up in a forceful manner. Now is probably not the time to berate him about this. He crouches down to get to eye level with the alien.

"Get me out!" Chou screams, squirming around frantically.

"Chou, please," Riku says, motioning downwards with both his palms.

"I can't feel my legs!" Chou screams as the mud reaches her chest.

"Chou, please," Riku says, "I can't get you out while you're like this."

"Get me-" Chou shouts.

"Chou," Riku says, even calmer than before, "Please stop moving."

"Riku, I-" Chou starts.

"Look in my eyes," Riku commands, "Stop moving and take some deep breaths."

"I..." Chou trails off, suddenly hyperventilating. Something else seems to have hit her and for her lack of screaming and flailing, she seems even worse off now than before.

"Shhhhh," Riku says, "It's okay, it's okay. Just breathe it out. You'll be fine."

Kiko watches as Riku consoles the alien, calmly reassuring her as she stands almost motionless. Kiko never really thought about it before, but it's nice to see that Riku can maintain his composure in such a dire situation. Even as the smog burns his skin and stings his olfactory nerves, it doesn't seem to stop him from his duty. As the descent into the ground stops just under her armpits, Chou finishes her hyperventilation and closes her eyes while breathing shallowly.

"...I'm okay," Chou says weakly, "I think it passed."

"Okay," Riku starts, "I can't pull you out from this angle. If I remember correctly, this is a dead man's sinkhole. It will pull you down harder if you try to move anywhere but up."

"What should we do?" Chou asks.

"This part is going to take a lot of concentration," Riku starts, "I need you to very slowly reach down and get your staff."

"But it's under the mud," Chou says.

"That's why you need to be very, very slow," Riku responds. Chou takes a couple breaths before starting to reach into the viscous fluid, grimacing as it washes over her skin. She seems to be struggling with all her might not to panic as she goes against all common sense in submerging herself further. After what feels like an eternity, she reaches her goal.

"Found it," Chou states, "What should I do now?"

"Very slowly lift your arm up," Riku instructs. After another eternity of glacial movement through the slime, Chou raises this brass metallic bar out overhead. Kiko isn't sure how this can be called a staff when even Chou's small hand nearly covers the entirety of it.

"Now what?" Chou asks.

"Extend it," Riku instructs, "Then grab its end and hold it towards me."

With the press of an invisible button, iron bars extend on either side of the brass handle to form a two meter long quarterstaff. Clever. Chou starts sliding the staff over towards Riku, careful to keep her grip lest she be lost to the sinkhole forever. Riku grabs onto the end, moving it to as level a position as possible.

"Okay, I'm going to lift you out now," Riku says, "Brace yourself."

Reinforcing the staff as best as he can, Riku starts to gradually stand up while hoisting Chou. He pushes with all his might to lift the alien out of her entrapment, his muscles straining to fight the gravity of the sludge. The mud's hold on Chou gradually loosens as Riku heaves with the most strength he can possibly muster. Kiko can't help but admire just how strong he truly is. That mud seemed like a dozen people pulling on her when she was only a couple centimeters in, yet he's able to lift Chou when she's almost entirely submerged. After a minute of glacial movement, the lifting suddenly speeds up until Chou just slides right out of the pit. Riku carefully spins her around and sets her down on solid ground, quickly moving in when she starts to fall over.

"Wow," Kiko remarks.

"Are you okay?" Riku asks as he holds Chou up in his arm.

"I can't feel my legs," Chou says weakly, "I need to get clean."

"Don't worry," Riku starts, "We'll get you to some clean water."

"Water?" Kiko asks, not sure what the alien really needs it for.

"Kiko," Riku starts as he turns his attention to her, "I need you to carry Chou for me."

"...why?" Kiko asks, unable to figure out what the hell he's thinking. He must be at least ten times stronger than her.

"I have to take point," Riku starts, walking behind Kiko while lifting Chou up, "I need to find a clear path."

"But-" Kiko starts, stopping as Riku hoists Chou onto her back without any warning. Kiko stumbles a little from the added weight, instinctively realigning herself as Riku helps brace the alien on her back. She starts to feel a little discomforted as Chou wraps her arms around her chest.

"Don't be a wimp," Riku says, kicking up the iron quarterstaff and walking forward. Kiko wants to protest, but she can't be so bold around Riku. Besides, it's not like he can both carry her and search for these sinkholes at the same time. She'll just have to accept being in such close proximity with the pink alien and press on. Still, it would be nice if Chou didn't have such a hard torso with lots of ridges that she can feel right through her clothes. Kind of a surprise, since Chou's arms and legs are really soft and all the pink makes her look like a freakish stuffed doll. Oh, well. At least she doesn't weigh much.

"Hey, Kiko," Chou says softly into Kiko's ear.

"What?" Kiko asks.

"How was your first big kill?" Chou asks.

"...huh?" Kiko asks, unsure what to make of this. Kiko starts moving forward as soon as she notices Riku's hand signals.

"Nobody else cared," Chou says, "But I do."

"Well..." Kiko starts, "I guess I got backed into a corner and there were some suicidal people cheering me on, so I just had to go for it, you know?"

"Really?" Chou asks, "Was it hard?"

"I don't know," Kiko says, "I ran out of bullets, so I had to make a bomb out of some stuff and blow up its head."

"That's pretty clever," Chou says, "I like being around you. You're fun."

Kiko isn't quite sure what to make of this. She's really not friendly around Chou at all, yet she's acting like they're on really familiar terms. Does the alien not realize that Kiko really doesn't hold a high opinion of her? Well, it's not hurting anything just yet to put up with this masquerade. Kiko keeps walking behind Riku, a bit surprised by the total lack of diversion in the path. Perhaps there weren't that many sinkholes to begin with? Regardless, it's nice to just have an effortless walk in dangerous terrain.

After a kilometer of sticky mud, Riku, Kiko, and Chou emerge from the smog to find a steep set of waterfalls. It's really kind of weird because the ruined landscape suddenly shifts from the icky mud into a fairly normal mountainous soil with barely a dividing line set in the ground. Even odder is how much of the thick mud turns into rapids to feed the waterfall. At least there's no more of that burning smog around here. The beige stone temple is canopied under a massive number of trees and vines, barely even visible to the naked eye. It sits on a large butte that must stand about a kilometer tall.

Still, the worrisome part is how this hill is about even with the top of the waterfalls. A gap about two kilometers wide separates the temple from the waterfalls, with a depth that can't be charted by sight alone. It certainly seems to go a kilometer down, but the huge whirlpools of water awaiting at the bottom must go even deeper. It's hard to even see down there with all the water vapor swirling through the air. Far off in the distance, there is a whole bunch of segmented stone bridges hanging on thick ropes.

"Let me off there," Chou says, pointing over Kiko's shoulder to one of the waterfalls. She's more than happy to oblige. After taking a few paces and gladly dropping the alien off by the water, Kiko walks up to Riku for some nice semi-private time near the edge.

"So..." Kiko starts, "Are we taking that bridge?"

"Nope," Riku says, pointing to some barely visible stream of water running down the cliff face near the back, "See that drainage pipe over there?"

"Not really," Kiko says, squinting her eyes to try and see through the cloud, "How are we going to get there?"

"I'm not sure," Riku says, "I was kind of expecting to just walk up to the cliff and climb up. Maybe I'll just glide each of you across separately. It's going to be pretty hard, though."

"Why couldn't Professor Uina just drop us off at the entrance?" Kiko asks, "He dropped us all the way out there in the icky mud when he could have put us on that hill."

"Something about an aerial defense system," Riku answers, "I don't think the grandmaster really planned this out very well, to be honest."

Kiko starts to say something, but her train of thought is derailed by this very loud rumbling coming from overhead. At first, she thought it was just a thunderstorm in the distance, but it keeps growing more forceful with every second. Just as it Kiko finds herself losing balance to the bass cacophony shaking through her, a white ship completely blocks out the sky. Kiko never really got an appreciation of just how mammoth the thing was back in the other world, but damn. It can't be flying any lower than half a kilometer off the ground, yet it casts a shadow akin to a solar eclipse. No wonder Uina didn't want to fight this head on. It continues flying past towards the temple, the engines spewing white smoke by the ton.

Just as it reaches the temple, a whole bunch of beige triangle things spew out from the walls. They start swarming around the ship, firing these green lasers at will into the hulking mass. Oddly enough, the white juggernaut just ignores the damage and continues flying even as the triangle things wail on it. As soon as the ship flies past the temple, the triangle things stop their assault and return to their indiscernible positions on the ancient structure.

"Okay," Riku starts, "We have maybe half an hour before they get to the inner sanctum. Let's move out."


	51. Ultra Violet Blaze

Kiko can't quite say she's too confident in Riku's big plan for traversing the grand chasm. For one thing, having to give Chou another piggy back ride is just not within her comfort zone. She doesn't understand why the alien can't just hold onto the rope as well, but whatever. She can't argue with Riku lest she drive him away. Yet it's not so much the idea of having to carry Chou as the fact that he intends to glide both of them across the swirling vortex of doom, with Kiko somehow getting ahold of the rock face at the end. It's just suicide for a mundane, non-magic person like her and she has to do it with a seventy pound alien on her back. Still, there doesn't seem to be any other option and Riku seems pretty sure of himself.

"Are you guys ready?" Riku asks from his perch up above.

"Ready!" Chou says just a little too enthusiastically for someone that just came from a life or death scenario. The thumbs up over Kiko's shoulder makes her cringe.

"I don't know..." Kiko says, looking doubtful. Maybe they don't have to come along for this. Surely, Riku can handle this by himself.

"Okay, here we go!" Riku says, jumping up and holding his keyblade horizontally in front of him.

"Wait!" Kiko shouts in vain. A bright flash envelopes Riku, blue energy forming into a wide wedge shape on either side of the keyblade and extending right through him. Kind of looks like a hang glider made of a glowing vapor. Just as suddenly as it formed, Riku starts gliding at an impressive clip towards the cliff. Kiko barely even gets a chance to react as the rope yanks her off the ground.

The shock of what follows immediately hits Kiko like a typhoon. Here she is, a kilometer above certain death with a cyclone of wind battering her from every direction and only a thin rope to keep her aloft. The cold mist feels like being submerged in a pervasive vat of the coldest iced water, the chill sinking through her skin. She can practically feel her flesh hardening into blocks of ice with every passing second. Yet even this feeling of impending doom by flash freeze can't compare with the heavy tearing of the wind. It feels like a hundred arms pulling, shoving, and punching her from every direction, trying with all their unified might to throw her into the abyss.

Kiko starts to panic as she realizes just how thoroughly screwed she is. She is only a mere human without even a tint of magic to her credit dangling precariously over the whirlpool of the gods. There's no way the rope is going to hold and even if it can, her hands will probably betray her eventually. She's already shivering just short of spasm all over and each second makes the rope feel harder and harder to hold. The end is nigh and all she can hope is that she'll die from the fall rather than the forceful rending of the currents or the suffocation as the water invades her lungs.

Yet, even with this knowledge causing her to tremble, she starts to feel relieved. She can't quite figure it out, but something is soothing her fears and calming her nerves. No longer does the kilometer drop to the massive vortex scare her. In fact, it seems downright pathetic that this is the best the precursors could come up with. A two kilometer moat of swirling doom? Ha. A bunch of teenagers are bypassing it even now with little more than some rope and a magic sword of ultimate destiny. They may as well have put up a polite sign asking trespassers not to steal the prism for all its doing.

After a few minutes, the mist clears up to reveal a vertical cliff face with jagged rocks protruding all over. Kiko's high starts to wear off as Riku starts circling the mountain, slowing down as he approaches a relatively stable platform. With a sudden jolt, Kiko feels herself flung upwards and returning with a sharp fall. Just before the panic can set back in, she just as suddenly stops. A glance upwards reveals Riku with his keyblade stabbed into the wall, acting as an unstable perch on this hazardous mountain. He seems to be making some kind of downwards motion with his free hand, a signal Kiko can only interpret as trying to get her to let go of the rope. Like hell she's going to do that.

"Hey, Kiko," Riku shouts, "I can't carry you both up with me, so please lower yourself onto that rock."

"Oh..." Kiko responds, remembering that she's holding onto the looped bundle. Not too hard to just unroll the rope gradually to get down to the enclave. Just as Kiko sets foot on the perilous ledge, she goes straight to the wall and ducks down to minimize her chances of being blown off.

"I'll cast a flare when I'm ready," Riku says, the sound of a large object cutting through the air followed by some faint sound of energy dissipating. Kiko can only imagine how he intends to get up there, but he does have a magic sword of ultimate destiny, after all.

"Chou," Kiko says.

"Yes?" Chou asks in that soft but inhuman voice.

"Get off my back," Kiko says in a cold tone.

"Oh," Chou says, quickly sliding off. Kiko carefully turns around to sit with her back to the cliff wall, getting a bit of a startle as she comes face to face with the alien.

"Why did you cast a spell on me?" Kiko says, gently pushing Chou back a little for some comfort space.

"You were really worried back there," Chou says, "I didn't want you to faint."

"I guess..." Kiko says, looking away. She really doesn't know what to think about this. Apparently, the alien has empathy and mind control powers of some kind as well as curing and pink death. That's just wrong. How can Chou invade the privacy of her emotions like that? Before Kiko can think too hard on this moral quandary, she notices a fireball from above home in on a nearby rock and explode. Certainly is nice of Riku to be so fast.

"You should go first," Kiko says.

"Okay," Chou says, spinning around and jumping up the rope with surprising dexterity. Nice to see she's not going to get in Kiko's way on the trip up, at least. Kiko starts her trek up the rope, doing her best to avoid looking down lest she panic herself. She can't help but find it kind of weird how the winds are actually pretty calm near the cliff. They felt like chaos incarnate on their way over, yet it's just a peaceful breeze here. No matter. It doesn't take too long before Kiko climbs her way into a cramped drainage pipe. Riku is already here and looks kind of spooked about something.

"What's wrong?" Kiko asks.

"You'll see," Riku responds, bundling up the rope at an impressive speed. Why won't he say what it is? There can't possibly be anything in there that they can't handle if it has already been explored and documented before.

Kiko follows Riku and Chou through a hole in the pipe lining into this huge circular room, shielding her eyes from the blinding light pouring from every corner of the chamber. It's like being on the surface of the sun. It takes her a second before she finds the standard issue pair of tinted goggles in her pockets, slipping them on and blinking the glare out of her eyes.

Another glance reveals what must be a hundred creatures made of some type of pure, viscous light. Their forms seem incongruous, portions of their bodies dripping off and dissolving into threads of luminescence. They are all over this stone room, rolling around in the thick pastures of grass and diving in and out of the pools of water. Whatever original design the precursors used for this temple seems to have fallen to the wayside to this downright bizarre outcrop of greenery. Even the two meter tall rectangular boulders randomly circling towards the center are carpeted. About the only thing in this room not covered is a meter and a half tall altar in the center, a red prism protruding from the top.

Then Kiko realizes something: these are the light based Heartless Uina showed her a while ago. But why? Why are they here in the middle of this temple? Or even better: _how _are they here? Kiko saw Uina's lab with them sealed inside. There should only be the one set if they're such an anomaly. Did they somehow break out and randomly decide to come _here_, of all places? It just doesn't make any sense.

"What should we do?" Kiko asks, turning back to face her companions. Both of them also have their goggles on, which looks downright weird on Riku.

"Well..." Riku says, "Not much choice but to walk. If these are really the reverse of the Heartless, they shouldn't attack us. Don't let your guard down, though."

Riku, Kiko, and Chou start walking through the massive atrium, the pasture softly crimping under their feet. Not even two steps in, the nearby Heartless stop in their tracks and turn to face the intruders. They start gathering around to surround the group, but keeping a distance of at least three meters. They have this quizzical look on their dark purple eyes, tilting their heads at random to analyze their guests. It's really kind of creepy, yet something about them seems so serene, so tranquil. Maybe it's the soft scent of lilac permeating the air or the lyrical trickle of water, but there's just something that makes Kiko want to spend the rest of her life in this room.

"Snap out of it," Riku says, lightly rapping Kiko's cheek with two of his fingers.

"...what just happened?" Kiko asks, looking around to notice she started walking towards one of the pools.

"There's a lot of magic in the air," Riku responds, turning back towards the altar, "It's compelling us towards the water, but I just don't trust it. There's something seriously wrong about all this. Focus on the objective."

"Okay," Kiko says, following behind as they continue towards the altar. These Heartless are perplexing, indeed. They seem to have a vested interest in the group, yet they neither try any communication nor do they come any closer than three meters. More and more seem to be gradually noticing them and joining the ever growing group. It's really kind of disconcerting.

To the best of Kiko's discernment, there seem to be two types in this crowd. The majority are single meter tall creatures with plump yet streamlined physiques and curvy antennae that seem analogous to Shadow Heartless. One of every eight, however, is at eye level with Kiko and quite a bit bulkier. What makes these kind of weird is the length of their arms and fingers. They reach down to their ankles and seem to have about four omni-directional joints along the way, bending in uncomfortable angles. It's disturbing to watch.

As Riku and company get closer to the altar, the group of light Heartless continues to grow while distancing themselves further. Their perimeter grows to five meters as the the team starts walking across a narrow bridge, careful not to let the water touch them. Whatever that liquid is, it's probably not prudent to test its properties here. Stepping onto the central platform, the light Heartless stay at the edges about seven meters away. Something about the altar itself seems to be keeping them away instead of their aversion to the team. At least they aren't getting in the way for this important swap.

"Chou," Riku says.

"Yes?" Chou responds, walking right up to his side.

"The fake prism, please," Riku says. Chou nods, reaching into her bag and pulling out what appears to be this brass triangular canister with a handlebar. She hands it over to Riku, stepping back to let him do his work. With a turn of the knob and a soft hiss, the canister opens to reveal a red prism just like the one embedded in the platform. The runic markings on it seem a bit blurred and it doesn't quite have that same glow, but it looks close enough. Riku places both items on the ground, grabbing onto the lodged prism and starting to pull upwards.

At the exact moment Riku touches the prism, the surrounding group of light Heartless stop looking very friendly. They all hunch over a little, raising their open claws into a ready stance. Their eyes seem to have gained some menace to them without even changing, their stares piercing through the team. They start gradually closing the perimeter as they circle the group.

"Um, Riku..." Kiko says in a worried tone.

"I see them," Riku says, straining as the prism moves at a glacial rate.

"What should-" Kiko starts, startled as one of the smaller Heartless leaps right towards Riku with both claws extended and a loud hiss resonating through the air. Thinking quickly, Kiko shoves it away with both hands, the creature toppling a few others on its new trajectory. Nice to see these aren't too different from the dark Heartless. Kiko quickly swings the gun to her front, grabbing a clip from the bandolier and slamming it in. A pull of the bolt and a smack of the safety later, she's armed and ready.

"Hold them off just a little longer," Riku says, pulling the stubborn artifact with all his might. As another small Heartless makes a leap, Chou quickly extends her staff and thrusts it right through the creature... not into it, but through it. Kiko is almost shocked to see the diminutive critter impaled on the staff of such a harmless little girl, feeling almost sympathetic as it writhes in pain. With a final futile twitch, the creature dissolves into some type of watery light before vanishing into nothingness. As the other light Heartless start shrieking in anger, Kiko just stares at Chou in amazement.

"Holy crap," Kiko says, unable to comprehend that the alien killed something. With an abrupt jolt, Kiko feels something latch onto her back. She's not exactly being on her guard if she allows something to get that close. Kiko shakes to her right, grabbing the creature and pitching it overhead into the swarming mass. Sensing more homing in on her, she does a heel spin and shoots each one out of the air. Each bullet explodes on impact, splattering the creatures and leaving them as flying masses of dissipating liquid light. As more and more creatures scramble to attack the team, Kiko starts doing sweeps with semi-automatic bursts. Might go against what she was always taught, but single shots aren't quite fast enough. Just as a group of four jump towards Riku from in front, Chou swats them all away with a single blow.

"Can't you magic them to death or something?" Kiko asks, continuing her spray.

"They don't have mitochondria," Chou responds. With a sudden red flash, Riku yanks the prism out of the altar.

"Got it!" Riku yells, effortlessly backhanding a leaping Heartless away. Kiko tries to shoot another incoming Heartless only to get the dreaded click of doom. Not wasting a moment, she pistol whips the offending creature upside the head at the last second and bats it away with both hands on the gun. Smacking the clip out of the gun, she grabs another and slams it in. Riku finishes sealing the old prism in the canister, slamming the fake into the enclave and elbowing it down.

"I'll take over, Chou," Riku starts, summoning his keyblade and tossing the canister to her, "Kiko, cover my rear."

"Okay," Kiko responds, getting behind Riku as he starts slicing through the mass by the dozen. Nice to see the Heartless are pretty much screwed now. Kiko never really saw him fight before, so it comes as a bit weird to see him just holding the keyblade horizontally in front of his face with a loose grip. Seems kind of unstable and not very defensive. Quite different from Sora's hip based hold, to be certain. Before Kiko can get to caught up in his many robust details, she spins around and fires a volley into the looming tall Heartless.

To Kiko's shock, it doesn't kill the beast. Oh, no. Instead, these large veins start popping up all around the wounds as the creature rapidly bulks up. It grows into a three meter tall contorted mess of muscles, giving a pained roar as it pounds small craters into the stone ground.

"Oh, crap," Kiko says as the hulking mass charges with seismic footsteps. Before Kiko can even react, it handily swats her over the thinning crowd and across the room. Kiko slides to a stop up against one of the boulders, her body aching and twitching. She's definitely not getting up for a while after that blow.

"Kiko?" Riku says as he turns around, quickly dodging to the side to avoid the downwards pound of the new opponent. Riku attempts a lateral slice into the monster, but it casually grabs the sword by its blade. Riku tries with all his might to shove it through, but the creature holds steady even with its shining white fluid streaming over the red crystalline blade. With a loud roar, the creature rips the sword out of Riku's hand and throws it away in some random direction. With no sword between it and Riku, the monster tries to clap Riku between its open palms. Of course, Riku won't have any of that, so he leaps over the attack, resummons his keyblade, and stabs downwards into the chest of the monster.

Amidst Kiko's admiration for the strength and cunning of her hero, she nearly misses the detachment of Heartless heading her way. Figures they can't just leave her to wallow in the pain of what has to be at least some type of debilitating injury. She'll just have to shrug it off. Pushing herself up with both hands against the boulder, Kiko shakes out the minor dislocations and swings the gun behind her. Forcing herself over the pain, Kiko grabs both her knives and holds them blades downward as she adopts a crouched stance. She'll have to thank Uina later for forcing her to bring these along.

If there's one thing Kiko remembers from her classes, it's the knife orientation. According to some teacher whose name always slips away, she needs to treat dual knife fighting like an elaborate dance with a constantly shifting choreography. Each maneuver must be a response, each step a feint, and each strike performed not before nor after the enemy's attack, but during. Only through the mastery of the great dance can Kiko best opponents with weapons a fraction their reach.

As the first Heartless leaps towards Kiko, she effortlessly dodges to the side while slicing through its abdomen. The visceral spray of rapidly dissipating, shiny white liquid proves her aim to be true. Not wasting any time, Kiko ducks under the two incoming Heartless, turns around, and stabs into their bellies. Doing a sweeping spin, Kiko evades the next one and partially decapitates it with a swoosh. Deciding to improvise against the advice, Kiko power-slides with arms outstretched to stab two more Heartless in the head. Only one of the larger ones left to stand in the way of Kiko and her allies now.

Kiko stares at her new opponent, waiting for that first move. She can't quite get over how these things want to kill her. Aren't they supposed to be on the side of good or something? They should be trying to help. They seemed so peaceful on those video records, too. Kiko still can't quite get over how threatening these things look once their glamor no longer applies. Even with these goggles on, their skin burns her eyes. For all the softness in their edges, it only seems to make them appear even less alive. And those joints that bend in all directions makes Kiko shudder. Suddenly, a red blade impales the creature and slices upwards, reducing it to a dissolving mass of glowing liquid.

"Are you okay?" Riku asks, casually walking through the evaporating corpse.

"I guess," Kiko says as Chou walks up.

"Why not use your gun?" Riku asks, "Especially after an injury like that."

"My gun started making them strong or something," Kiko says, looking around, "I don't know. Did we kill all of them?"

"No," Riku responds. Before Kiko can say anything, she feels a guttural rumble begin to fill the room. The water starts to overflow and surge as the ground near that tempting pool cracks and fissures. A white creature of considerable mass starts to rise from below, the water cascading off its rapidly changing form.

"Okay, we're leaving," Riku says, striding towards the hidden entrance. As Kiko and Chou follow behind, the sound of high pitched wails swarm the corridors. With the significant increase in power these creatures hold over their dark brethren, Kiko would certainly not want to face off against a prime. It would be total suicide. Riku has the right idea with taking the escape route before the beast can fully materialize, ducking in and starting his crawl through the pipe. Just as Kiko reaches the hole in the wall, another flash goes by her eyes. A glance over her shoulder reveals an incoming boulder, with too little time to avoid having her torso crushed into the wall. Another flash later, Kiko quickly responds by tackling Chou to the ground. She can feel the air displace above her head as the giant rock smashes into the wall.

Not wanting to stay so close to the alien any longer than she has to, Kiko rolls off and picks herself up. Towering over the room is the massive presence of the giant light Heartless, a creature that would cast a large shadow if it wasn't so bright. Standing fully vertical at an impressive seven meters tall, its slim frame betrays its wide arm span and giant golden talons at the end of each limb. A magnificent plume of white and grey feathers run down its back, ending in what seems like a ragged cloak of perpetual molt. Yet, it's not even the most worrisome part of this ordeal. In every corner of the room, cohesive, clustered rays of light bend and swirl, forming into swarms of Heartless all focused on Kiko and Chou. Things are looking pretty grim at this point.

The horde of shiny Heartless suddenly shift their attention towards the other side of the room, focusing on a set of red beams cutting through the wall. With a sudden loud crack that resonates through the air, the wall collapses to reveal none other than the decrepit white suited astronaut. Much to Kiko's dismay, he seems to have received an upgrade since she last saw him. Both his arms are equipped with quad-cannons, a white smoke pouring out of their barrels at an unrealistic rate. On his back is a pack of some sort, made of a whole lot of scrap metal that looks like it will fall apart at any time. Surrounding him are hovering robots of some kind, each consisting of an orb with a lens and a set of spindly wire hooks extending forward.

"At last!" Cenari says, "The key to change the course of history!"

Without even needing the flash to guide her, Kiko tackles Chou back down into a corner by the boulder and covers her in the prone position. Just as expected, Cenari showers the area with lasers from his quad cannons. The first targets never stood a chance, but much of the swarm reacts with a shift back into rays of light and a scatter away from the beams. The giant Heartless lets out a loud roar as the lasers sear its skin, its legs knocked out from under it. The rays start coalescing into Heartless all around Cenari, attacking with wasted vigor as lasers from probes and punches from the astronaut devastate them like a brick through plate glass. One could almost feel pity for these Heartless, unable to even slow him down as he makes his way to the altar.

"Kiko, what are-" Chou whispers.

"Not now," Kiko whispers back, cupping the alien's mouth. As Cenari finishes off the last of the attacking minions, the giant Heartless rises up and starts back towards its white-clad opponent. Not the smartest of moves given its opponent, yet it has an ace up its sleeves. Cenari bears all eight arm cannons into a single cohesive beam aimed at the creature's chest, deflated as the Heartless creates an orb that disperses the laser into a rainbow cornucopia that covers the entire room. Kiko has to look away lest she be blinded right through the tinted borosilicate.

Kiko keeps her head down as more flat pitches of laser fire ring through the air, culminating in the sound of something made of granite collapsing and crashing on the loudly shrieking monster. After a few seconds of practically deafening silence, Kiko opens her eyes to find a huge rock pile covering the twitching Heartless right beside the altar. Cenari doesn't even seem to care about finishing it off as he pulls at the stubborn prism, white smoke softly drifting out of his suit. Well, all's well that ends well. Just have to let him walk off with the fake and call it a day.

But alas, Riku's timing is pretty crappy. Sure, he had no way to know what's happening on the other side of the rock, but bursting through it in an impressive spray of pebbles certainly brought Cenari's attention squarely on him. Riku continues on his focused rage towards the astronaut, leaping forward with keyblade held high. Cenari casually glances up and fires a beam right into Riku's torso, launching him back to his entrance point. With fear and concern for her idol flowing through her, Kiko leaps up and runs to Riku's side as he finishes his painful scraping slide.

"What are you doing?" Kiko asks in a whisper shout of sorts as she helps Riku to his feet.

"Keeping up appearances," Riku whispers back, flinging his head to the side with an accompanying pop. Before he can do anything, a dozen floating orb robots swarm in and surround the group. Kiko and Chou move behind Riku, allowing him to cover them from the threat of the drones.

"Leave me alone," Cenari calls out in that raspy voice, "I've got nothing to do with you and there's nothing that you can do."

Of course, saying that to Riku is like trying to talk a wolf away from red meat. Assessing his situation, he finds a gap in the makeshift grid and makes his attack. But as fast as Riku is, these drones are just that much faster with agility to match. The lithe machines dodge Riku's energetic swings by whole meters, firing thin lasers into him from all angles. Kiko wonders how he can take such punishment, but now is not the time to wonder about things like that. If Riku can't hit these with all his magically enhanced skill and a nearly meter long sword, Kiko wouldn't stand a chance with knives. She'll just have to use her gun in spite of the strengthening effect it showed earlier. She holsters both her knives, swinging her gun in front and disarming the safety.

Kiko starts firing at the drones, each one going down in a spray of sparks. Well, that works. Unfortunately, it seems to have set Kiko much higher on the priority list than even Riku. Without the benefit of a thick layer of magic armor or whatever, Kiko starts evading the beams of the four drones. Lucky for her, they really telegraph their actions. A bend here, a duck there, and a couple bullets in between knock down three, but the dreaded click of doom stops her progress just as she brazenly opens herself up for a full-on beam. Before the probe gets its shot off, however, Riku manages to land a hit and burst it into pieces.

"Thank you," Kiko says, knocking the clip out and slamming a new one in. Riku ignores her and turns his attention back to the astronaut, preparing himself for another attack. Cenari finally manages to wrest the prism out of its socket, his arms swinging back with a lot of force as the altar releases its hold.

"Finally!" Cenari shouts triumphantly, casually tossing the prism behind him to the waiting hook arms of a drone.

"Hand it over!" Riku shouts in a passionate but unconvincing manner. Well, Kiko finds it unconvincing, anyway. Cenari just stares at Riku for a few seconds before extending his arm and tapping something into a freshly formed keyboard. Almost immediately, the very foundation of the building starts shaking from sequential sustained bombardments.

"No," Cenari says, "As long as my ship blazes through the skies, I will never give up the fight."

The ground starts to tremble as the ceiling crumbles. It's like the whole place is collapsing in on itself. Whatever card Cenari pulled, it certainly is a pretty good one. As Riku leaps forward with keyblade poised, the astronaut hops backwards with jets on his boots producing a thick white smoke. Riku's plans to follow up with another leap are thwarted as Cenari brings the full force of his arm cannons on him. Riku narrowly blocks the attack with his keyblade, unable to do much but watch as his opponent heads towards his exit. Cenari eventually lets up, spinning around and starting a heavy jog of clattering footsteps out. Riku casually jumps over the desperate swipe of the emerging giant Heartless, giving pursuit to the white-suited astronaut.

Suddenly, Kiko's ogling of the events is interrupted by another flash of doom. A very thick laser beam pierces through the roof and vaporizes Chou, a large chunk of the collapsing ceiling crushing Kiko. Another flash and Kiko realizes that it just wouldn't be kosher to let Chou get killed. Rushing as fast as possible, Kiko tackle-grapples Chou and flings her over her shoulder with the heat of the laser hot on her heels. Kiko evades falling ceiling debris and more thick laser beams as she makes her way towards Cenari's exit, just barely getting out of the room before it completely caves in. Time to chase after Cenari and fake a loss to stop the awakening of the universe's most destructive force.


	52. Colossal

Kiko heads into the hallway, her every step sending up clouds of smoke and debris in her wake. She has to admit that Cenari's big plot to destroy the temple behind him is one part clever, two parts suicidal. How he can reasonably control the lasers on his ship while running through collapsing corridors is anyone's guess, but it seems like he really can. His path of laser cut walls completely bypassing the labyrinthine passageways are so narrow as to seem downright unusable for someone so bulky, yet he jumps through each one with a surprising grace. Kiko finds herself at odds to keep up with this man in spite of his considerable weight, but at least Chou is considerate enough to break loose and start running on her own.

"Give it up!" Riku shouts, still unconvincing to Kiko's ears. Riku dives in for a vertical slash, noticeably diverting his course in order to slice in front of the astronaut. Clever, but kind of incompetent looking. Cenari punches Riku really hard in the kidney, launching him across the room into a pile of rubble. Worry starts to flood through Kiko as she diverts towards Riku, her fears just as suddenly relieved when Riku jumps out and continues his pursuit. It's unrealistic to expect that her hero would ever go down for the count with just a single punch, after all.

Kiko realizes that she has a clear shot at the drone with the prism. It would be kind of suspicious to pass up such an opportunity, so Kiko aims to a side and starts firing. Too bad her aim is just a little too good, with the bullets homing in on the hovering robot and exploding in small spherical bursts. The prism flies up as the spindly wire arms of the expired drone surrenders its prize, the crystalline decoy scattering the light as it spins around. High pitched tings ring out as the prism bounces off the stone ground.

Suddenly, Kiko gets yet another flash of certain death. Cenari spins around on his heel, grabbing the prism with one hand as he does a full power laser sweep with the other. Kiko gets severed at the waist line, her torso falling off and flopping around. Another flash and Kiko responds by tackling Chou back down. She feels this uncomfortable heat go over her back as she falls in what feels like slow motion, the alien providing the only cushion. Upon hitting the ground, Kiko notices Cenari just continue his spin and head back towards the exit. He really must be in a big rush if he's passing up the opportunity to kill them, but then again, he's fully aware of what he's doing to the temple.

As Kiko starts to get up, she feels something jump on her back and start tearing away at her clothes. Acting instinctively, Kiko spins around, slams the light Heartless off with her gun, and fires a few bullets into it as it flies through the air. Kiko feels panic from what should be dire consequences, but barely gets even a nanosecond of concern when she notices the spherical explosions burst the creature into dissolving globs of shiny liquid. She can't quite figure out what just happened, but it's nice her gun is working properly again. A quick glance reveals the clip has the red sticker on it. Something to keep in mind.

Kiko is brought out of her contemplation as more lasers start shattering the ceiling and uprooting the ground. Chou has already run way ahead and she can't even see Riku any more. Not wasting any more time, Kiko starts a mad dash towards the exit. After another laser cut hole in the wall, she comes up to a long hallway leading out to the front. Cenari has stopped running, instead relying on his heavy pollution rockets to carry him out at a much faster pace than Kiko could ever hope to accomplish. Certainly simplifies the rationale on her lack of action to stop him.

With the temple collapsing all around, Kiko speeds up as much as possible. Boulders fall all around as Riku and Chou dodge around, narrowly evading falling ceilings and attacking Heartless. With the deafening sound of the building foundation starting to waver, adrenaline courses through Kiko's veins and boosts her metabolism to unseen levels. Unfortunately, the entrance arch finally buckles just as Riku and Chou make their way through, threatening to seal poor Kiko inside. With the speed of a gazelle, she barely manages to leap through a tiny opening in the wall of debris just before it seals the temple.

Compared to what's out in this arbor garden, Kiko starts to think her odds of survival were better inside. Hundreds of Heartless of both types are fighting each other in a downright vicious manner, swarming all over from every surface. Oddly enough, rather than just swipe and tear, they just latch onto each other with their claws extended forward. From this unbreakable stance, dark and light energies swirl through their contact points and fill into each other until one is completely changed into the other. Unfortunately for the dark side, it seems the light have a significant advantage and are able to convert anything less than twice their size with ease.

All this has nothing on the fight between Sora and the forces of evil, however. On one side is Mint and Mondale, each completely focused on their target to the exclusion of their surroundings. Goldwater is cowering inside a makeshift drop ship of Cenari's design with a couple red giants standing guard while Maleficent stands there, doing... nothing. No fancy pyrotechnics or transformation to giant dragons; just an unbreakable gaze on the battlefield with a detached expression. Rather unsettling, actually. Unlucky for the bad guys, Sora seems to have ascended to a more powerful form and is dual wielding blue and white keyblades with a vapor trail of energy following his every move. Is it Drive or is there some explanation that doesn't involve the video games?

"Are you okay?" Chou asks, walking over to Kiko.

"I'm fine," Kiko responds, pushing herself off the ground. A couple scrapes and cuts, but they'll probably heal up before this is all over. She looks upon the field of battle, unsure of what to do. The Heartless that aren't occupied with each other are all swarming after Riku, completely ignoring Cenari as he hovers towards the drop ship. While Riku certainly isn't in any danger, it seems sort of odd they'd just ignore both Cenari holding the duplicate and Chou holding the original. Very peculiar, indeed.

Kiko starts pondering her options. The way the forces of evil are attacking suggests not just that they're after the prism, but also the death of Sora. Loathe as Kiko is to admit it, that would be a decisive victory in their favor. Yet, it just doesn't fit. Why would Maleficent recall her henchmen when they were already fighting Sora on the other world? They seem like they're holding their own even against this ascended form, a luxury he didn't have back on the other planet. But then again, she might have been expecting a move like this. It always is hard to tell with people like this.

Forcing herself back on track, Kiko thinks about which target is probably the most vulnerable. Obviously, she can't interfere with Cenari lest the operation go down the toilet. She could probably pick off Goldwater with ease, but she doesn't seem like any willing participant. Maleficent... nah. That didn't work so great last time or any other time someone else tried it. Mint has that whole subconscious barrier thing going for her, leaving only the sickly cyborg open for attack. Well, no time like the present. Kiko carefully lines up a shot with the sparking and constantly shifting giant, firing a volley with as much precision as possible.

Another bright flash goes by Kiko's eyes with exact overlap on Mondale's crack and she can already guess what's going to happen. After two long seconds of stillness, Mondale's fist reappears as it impacts on her head and snaps it off with nary any resistance. Another flash and Kiko quickly dodges down and to the side. Mondale's fist travels overhead, but another flash shows Kiko's new demise by a follow up right through her chest. It hasn't even been a second. Another flash and Kiko spins around the traveling fist. Yet another flash shows her being decapitated by another follow up punch. With the ending flash, Kiko ducks and performs a sideways roll.

Kiko keeps up this frenzied martial ballet, each move countered with a deadly efficiency that only her preservation precognition can avert. Flash on, dead, flash off, avoid, flash on, dead, flash off, avoid. It's a strobe light of alternating doom and narrow escape. She doesn't even get a chance to think about how she can get a shot off when there's mere nanoseconds not overlapping with dodged blows.

She isn't so lucky to have this go on forever, though. Just when she thinks Mondale has finally slipped, it just turned out her precognition decided to abandon her. An uppercut in Kiko's bent abdomen launches her a good seven or eight meters in the air, the cyborg gathering electricity in his raised fists down below. Her body unresponsive from the electricity flowing through her, Kiko waits for her inevitable death. There are worse ways to go out than electrical pummeling, but at least she can claim she spent at least fifteen seconds sparring at lightning speed.

It just happens to be Kiko's lucky day, though. Mondale's flash and crack happens just in time to evade Riku's wide arcing sweep, the blur heading off in a random direction. Of course, that doesn't stop the fact that she's going to crash on top of her hero, but at least it will be soft. Riku gives a casual sigh as he desummons his keyblade and extends his arm to catch Kiko. Just as she lands safely in his grasp, Mondale reappears and punches Riku hard enough to send him flying in the air with Kiko in tow. The two end up crashing onto the ground and rolling in tandem before ending with Riku on his back and Kiko on top. Quite a compromising position, with Kiko parallel to Riku and her eyes meeting his.

She can't help but think of how far she has come. Only a month ago, she was struggling to get Riku to even acknowledge her existence or stay in the same room as her, but now, she's as close as she always fantasized. Such a firm yet supple body, each contour an ode to bliss. An eternity in his arms is never too much. Each passing second makes Kiko desire to go further, yearning to remove the arbitrary barrier of the clothing to better experience his divine features. Oh, such sensation that could be had. He even looks kind of flustered at the situation, unable to say what's on his mind. To Kiko's surprise, he reaches up to her chest... and shoves her off. How humiliating. Kiko starts to feel even more rejection than ever before. How could he lead her on like that?

"Wha-" Kiko starts, interrupted as Riku just barely summons his keyblade and blocks the elbow jab of the recently materialized Mondale, "...oh, right."

Kiko lies there, mortified by how she lost track of the situation like that. Sure, Riku is very attractive and any self-respecting straight woman would lose herself in his arms, but in the middle of a war zone with hundreds of Heartless and a highly dangerous man trying to kill them? That's just really bad timing. Still, he has such a magnificent body, his muscles in perfect harmony as he battles this dreadful cyborg. Such speed, such finesse, such power. Even the sweat and occasional blood smearing his clothing does nothing to stop him from being the best specimen of manhood ever conceived in this universe.

For some reason, Kiko is distracted from her hero by the happenings over at the skiff. Maleficent seems to be saying something while motioning towards Riku, with Goldwater reluctantly summoning forth some more Heartless. Out from the ground a good distance away pops a bunch of red giants circling a quivering mass of liquid shadow. All the surrounding light Heartless break off their fights and start swarming towards the new combatant, their old targets following behind. The blob starts to solidify as it stands upright, at least twenty meters to its height making its slender figure look dangerously fragile. Loosely attached carapace plates and long, thin barbs start popping up, each one looking like it could impale a person from head to toe. It gives a loud roar, the dark purple jewel in its forehead flashing for the briefest of seconds.

The spiny Heartless doesn't even get a chance to finish its bluster before light Heartless start leaping onto it, latching and trying to inject light energy into its flesh. Confused and disoriented, the giant starts flailing about to try and escape the collective grasp of its parasites. Occasionally, it grabs one of its flung tormentors and squeezes darkness right into it, tossing aside a newly converted member of the horde to join its defenders.

With its body clear of intrusive attackers and the surrounding area secured by its throng, it crouches into a fetal position as all the barbs start to extend. With a loud battle cry, it jumps out of its curl with hundreds of spikes shooting out in all directions. Friend and foe alike within a good thirty meters get impaled by the rain of quills, their bodies dissolving from the puncture wounds outwards. Only the outside fringes of light Heartless remain, staggered at such a brutish display of power.

With nothing standing between it and Riku, it starts on its stride with a smug look on its face. Even Mondale seems sort of spooked by this, performing a thunder dash away as the freshly spineless monster approaches with a glow in its forehead. Riku just seems kind of nonplussed, waiting for some sort of indication of intent on behalf of the giant creature. Why he doesn't at least try to maintain a good distance after a spine barrage like that is anyone's guess.

Then it hits Kiko. This is another attempt on Riku's keyblade. She can't figure out why Maleficent is so dead set on getting it, though. Sora is the one with the true keyblade of legend, after all. Still, Kiko isn't going to allow something as horrible as a painful extraction of his keyblade to happen. Not while she's around. Kiko does her best to ignore the pain as she fumbles her gun around, her still twitching body conspiring against her. Getting a general bearing on the giant Heartless, she starts a spray and pray at its head. Bullet upon bullet explodes upon its face with nary a twitch, the gem glowing brighter by the second.

Finally, a stray bullet blasts apart the dreadful gemstone with a puff of purple energy just one bullet before the clip runs out. The giant Heartless recoils in shock, black viscous fluid spraying out of its new orifice. Riku seems kind of stunned, but in one of those passive ways. He didn't even enter the battle yet and he's already winning. After watching the injured Heartless spasm around a little, he decides to take a little initiative. After all, now is probably the best time to kill it without incident. With a draw of his keyblade, Riku takes a step forward and hops up into the air with weapon raised.

But to Riku's surprise, a light Heartless grabs his foot and slams him face down into the pavement. Kiko didn't even see this thing until it already happened. While things should be kind of bad for Riku, it seems these Heartless have all forgotten about him. Instead, they're all leaping onto the writhing giant like some demented football pile up. Each latched creature has light energy pouring through its claws into the tormented giant, the skin slowly changing to match. As more and more light flows through it, its body becomes more and more unstable. Parts start dripping off as the vague bone structure starts to crumple, the legs eventually giving out and collapsing the creature face first into the pavement.

With a sudden flash and rolling wave of light coursing through the felled giant, every creature attached starts melting. These blobs of light start absorbing themselves into the growing mass of goo that used to be the spiny Heartless. Not really the most pleasant of images, but still doesn't seem that unusual to Kiko. Maleficent seems somewhat worried about it... well, maybe. Her face is always pretty solemn, but she seems to be calling out towards the battlefield while making some motion towards Cenari. Through some unknown form of communication, Mint rushes back while throwing up a wall to impede Sora's pursuit. Arriving back on the skiff just in time, the whole craft starts to lift up into the air.

Sora won't have that, however. Like hell he's going to let his enemies get away so easily. With the landing craft slowly rising towards the incoming mothership, Sora makes a determined long jump in hopes of catching it. Perhaps Kiko's imagination always got away from her, but it seems kind of underwhelming to see Sora's best jump only goes up a good thirty meters or so. Surely, a magically enhanced person capable of gliding through the air can do better than that? It's not even enough to scale the average skyscraper.

Still, he barely manages to stab into the craft and hoist himself up. Not exactly the smartest move with at least three superpowered fighters all waiting on top. Perhaps it was luck that Mondale beat everybody to the literal punch, launching the teen hero off before either laser or crystal shard can tear him apart. Sora spasms all the way down the full thirty five meters before landing with a painful dust cloud. For the first time Kiko has ever seen, Riku gets a look of genuine shock on his face. With nary a pause, he rushes over towards his fallen comrade with a frantic gait. Kiko gets up and follows behind to the best of her ability, her still spasming muscles tripping her a couple times before she reaches the crater.

"Sora, are you okay?" Riku asks in uncharacteristic distress.

"...yeah," Sora says, slowly picking himself up out of his would-be shallow grave. Riku's face melts back into its usual passive self, his stance neutralizing itself to match.

"Still trying to be the big hero, huh," Riku comments dryly.

"Oh, come on," Sora starts whimsically, "You were worried. Don't try to hide it."

"Yeah," Riku says, "Worried I would have to clean this place up by myself."

"Um..." Kiko interjects, noticing the blob of light starting to stand upwards as it assumes a vaguely humanoid form.

"Effectively by myself," Riku corrects, "Why'd you jump after them, anyway? We _want_ them to get away with the 'keystone'. That was the whole point behind this."

"I thought I could take out one or two of them," Sora says, "Weaken their side a little. Sure, Maleficent herself is unyielding and this is a disinformation operation of sorts, but what harm could it do? They would at least be expecting _something_ like this, after all."

"What, besides the fact that you could have been killed?" Riku asks.

"I cast my barriers," Sora says. All the while during this discussion, the giant Heartless continues to grow in size above the fifty meter mark. Its skin starts hardening into these vaguely chalk-like slabs, a thick white dust shaking off with every move. It's almost fortunate, with this hardened skin not giving off solar radiation that would probably be highly cancerous in the real world. Thick thorny spikes of greater width and density than before start sprouting out around the arms and shoulders.

"Um, guys..." Kiko tries to interject again.

"Yeah, yeah," Riku starts without even glancing away, "Giant bloodthirsty monster about to kill us. We know."

"But why aren't you stopping it?" Kiko asks.

"It isn't fully formed yet," Sora answers, "You can't hurt them while they're in blob form."

"Come on," Riku says in a derisive tone as he turns to face Kiko, "That was... the third or fourth sentence of the Heartless manual we just told you. Are you not even trying any more?"

"Oh, be gentle," Sora says, "She probably didn't think the same rules apply to these guys."

"Yeah, I guess," Riku says, turning towards the forming giant Heartless, "Maybe we should think of how to kill it?"

"Sounds like a plan," Sora says, "Think it's a type VII?"

"Looks like it," Riku starts, "But these guys are just a bit stronger than the garden variety darkness based ones, so I think we should treat it as a type IX to be safe."

"Destiny Islands Pincher?" Sora asks, "Maybe some Jaeger Feints?"

"Sure, but for that stunt you pulled, you get to be the lure," Riku says, looking around a little, "Where's Chou?"

"Um..." Kiko stammers, "She was with me a few minutes ago."

"Kiko," Riku says, walking up and placing his hand on her shoulder, "I have a special assignment for you. It's really important."

"...of course," Kiko says, flustered by the touch, "Anything for you."

"I want you to find Chou, bring her to safety, and call Professor Uina in for extraction," Riku instructs.

"...what about you guys?" Kiko asks, "You could really use the help in-"

"No," Riku interrupts, "This is way out of your league."

"But-" Kiko attempts.

"No 'buts'," Riku says, "Whatever you killed back in the city was only a type II."

"Type III, at least," Sora corrects, "It had an elemental attack."

"Whatever," Riku retorts, "No magically unassisted human has ever survived against anything higher than a type V. Now, please, don't argue and just go."

"Fine," Kiko grumbles, jogging away from her comrades. It really pisses her off that they have so little faith in her. Surely, she could do something useful. She has a gun, after all... that seems to sometimes make them stronger. Maybe it's the ammo? The red and white dots probably have something to do with it. The current clip is red, so whatever is in the white is not a good choice. Not like it matters now with this pointless role.

After wandering around a while, Kiko finally locates Chou just a bit away from the sealed entrance. The top to her torn uniform lies in the grass drenched in a thick pink fluid, even more puddles of it leading up to the injured alien. Kiko isn't quite sure if she feels all that sympathetic for the creepy girl, but those wounds must be far from painless with her wincing at every applied bandage around the light brown carapace of a torso. Even the medical tape is saturated with the pink fluid.

"Hey, over here, Kiko," Chou calls out weakly. It takes Kiko a second before she realizes what she's looking at.

"Oh, god," Kiko cringes, covering her eyes and looking away as her whole body shudders, "You don't even wear a bra?"

"Why would I wear a bra?" Chou asks innocently, "I don't have any breasts to wear it on."

"I can never unsee that," Kiko remarks under her breath, "Never."

"Are you okay?" Chou asks, still oblivious, "You look kind of pale."

"I'm fine," Kiko mutters, "Just... fine. Stay there. I'll get some help."

Just as Kiko starts to reach for her communicator, a loud crash echoes from the general direction of the sealed gateway. That can't possibly be a good sign. Nothing should be alive in there after having the whole colossal stone structure dropped on it. After a few seconds of taut suspense, another crash bursts apart the rubble as the giant light Heartless from before emerges. Kiko doesn't know jack about Heartless anatomy, but the glowing white liquid dripping out of it by the liter can't be anything but a sign of severe damage. Huge gashes across its body, three missing digits from its hands, and a completely shattered beak speak volumes not just of its critical state, but also of its resilience. No video ever showed a dark Heartless get this injured before dying.

"Holy crap..." Kiko remarks softly as the creature turns to face her, a fierce animal rage in its one functional eye. There is no way this will bode well for her. If it survived having all that crap dropped on top of it, what's a couple dozen more bullets? Still, Kiko can't just leave Chou to certain death and she doesn't seem like she's able to walk just yet. Maybe Kiko can buy some time and lure it away? Perhaps until Sora and Riku are free to kill it for her? Seems like the best course of action.

Kiko starts stepping backwards, maintaining eye contact with the slowly advancing giant. Such a dangerous face off when she doesn't even know its capabilities. Surely, it can deflect lasers, but that doesn't seem too relevant with a normal kinetic weapon. Still probably not a good idea to go full auto just yet. Kiko slams the current clip out and reaches for a new one to discover... a white dot. Useless. Tossing it aside, Kiko draws another clip to find... white. Another... white. White, white, white. Already, this fight looks doomed. It must be divine favor that left the last clip of the bandolier a red. She's definitely going to have a talk with Uina after this.

Kiko is taken off-guard by the sudden ball of white energy flung at her. She quickly dodges to the side, slamming the clip inside and pulling the bolt back before she even lands. A large flash even visible from behind and a lot of heat seem to suggest this ball as explosive. And here she was, expecting something purely physical from this opponent. Not wasting any time, Kiko fires a volley as she pushes herself onto her feet. The giant casually extends a hand and summons forth a multicolor ball of energy, the bullets apparently curving at least five meters off its target to explode within the sphere. Guess the laser deflection move became relevant after all.

Kiko dashes away as the creature starts throwing more balls of charged energy. Each sphere detonates in short pillars of pure light, uprooting the ground and launching debris everywhere. Kiko tries to shoot it, but it anticipates each volley with the same deflector sphere. Utterly infuriating, to be certain. Just as Kiko decides the best course is to abandon the fight, the creature puts both arms up and starts gathering energy into a sphere of at least ten meters in diameter. She is definitely not going to wait to see how that ends. Kiko turns and starts running as fast as she possibly can, zigzagging just like instructed in school.

Not even five seconds go by before the large sphere lands a good five meters to the side. It would be a lucky evade if it weren't for the massive shockwave immediately launching Kiko a dozen meters in the air. She just barely misses the attempted grab of the giant Heartless as she passes by, landing face first on the ground and sliding across the harsh pavement. She feels the skin of her cheek just come right off, excrutiating pain shooting through her every nerve. What could have only been three seconds feels like three lifetimes of perpetual pain, her only concession being the soft grass her limp body settles upon.

"Kiko!" Chou shouts, once against failing the basic test of tactical discretion. Kiko slowly looks up to see Chou running as fast as her wounds will allow from ahead, the giant Heartless lumbering painfully from the left. They're so doomed. Even if Chou was in perfect health and hopped up on adrenaline, there's no way she could fend this thing off. Not with a staff that may as well just be a toothpick as far as the creature is concerned. However, the creature does seem to have become kind of sluggish, kind of just limping over without even sending any spheres. That large blast must have taken a toll on it. Chou finally reaches Kiko, sitting down at her side.

"Are you okay?" Chou asks.

"Do I look okay?" Kiko remarks cynically, glancing at the transparent strip along the edge of the clip, "Only four bullets left. Looks like this is the end for us, huh?"

"Um..." Chou says, fumbling for words, "...may I have permission to touch you?"

"...sure, go for it," Kiko concedes, confused by Chou's question, "I don't have much of a choice, do I?"

"This might tingle," Chou says, pulling Kiko's sleeve up and gripping her wrist. Almost immediately, Kiko's muscles spasm painfully as she feels some alien energy overwhelm her. Every nerve starts firing wildly as her senses go into overdrive. Any pain she felt before in her life doesn't compare in the slightest to this feeling. From the clock tower plummet to the explosion on Discord to that uppercut from Mondale, it all pales in comparison to what is supposedly Chou's assistance. A thousand deaths would be preferable to this feeling.

And yet, just as it all comes to a blinding crescendo, it suddenly goes away. Kiko is left feeling completely aware of her surroundings, with every last ridge on the grass registering down to the picometer and every last sound wave down to that water trickle from the nearby tree coming in loud and clear. She can even hear her own veins flowing inside her. Yet in spite of this near omniscient awareness, she feels oddly detached. Kind of like she's watching a movie instead of actually experiencing these events.

Kiko pushes herself back to her feet, only then realizing that everything seems to be moving unusually slowly. The bird half a kilometer away is flapping much too slowly yet ascending even slower. The softly falling sand from the top of the collapsed building is practically glacial. Why has everything become so slow? Is it a side effect of this cure? Has she discovered a new power within her? It would be kind of cool if it was the latter, but Kiko is smart enough not to get her hopes up.

It's only with the slight increase in light levels on the nearby wall that Kiko realizes she forgot all about the giant. A quick turn reveals the creature gathering up energy within its palm. While the pulse rate of about four hundred forty rotations per second for the sphere is interesting in and of itself, the gold pulse from a small lobe on the back of its head is way more fascinating. What is with that thing? It's just plain weird, but it gives Kiko an idea. Maybe that's the source of all its power? Seems as good a place to plant some explosive lead as any.

Kiko leaps over the incoming sphere, traveling in an arc over four meters high over what feels like a minute. To think, this process seems to have given her unnatural jumping abilities to go with this superhuman sensory experience. Already, she owes Chou some well deserved kudos when this is over. Landing with perfect grace, Kiko kicks herself backwards to evade the incoming downwards pound of the creature. Sure, it hasn't moved yet, but those muscles twitching like that gave it away. Maybe now would be a good time to get a shot off? But the lobe isn't quite visible just yet and even then, it would just be a glancing blow. She'll just have to figure out another way.

Perhaps she should think of a way above it? It's only about seven meters tall, give or take twelve centimeters. If she were to shoot it as she passed, she should allow at least four hundred and twenty six centimeters of distance for the explosive projectiles. To that end, given her newfound jumping ability and calculations on doing a backflip instead of a forward bound, she needs to get at least seven hundred and seventy two centimeters off the ground while still being close enough to maximize the overhead arc. Lady luck happens to be smiling on her with a tree just tall enough to do in just the right place, however. Behind and about three meter to the right of the creature. Perfect for the planned turn of the monster in the process.

Starting her seemingly lumbering run towards the giant creature, she preemptively dodges another downward pound betrayed by that slight twitch of muscular veins. So nice of the Heartless to telegraph its moves like that; even better that it's going to embed its fist in the ground and immobilize itself. Kiko speeds up her run a little as the tree comes within range. Seems to be about four hundred years old by the way it flexes in the breeze. Perfect for something like this.

With the ground tremoring from the downward pound, Kiko hops up and kicks her right foot right through the bark. The tree is just barely weakened enough with age and local weather conditions to allow about two centimeters of give, but that's all she needs. Kiko kicks another small notch in the tree, removing her other foot and preparing another kick to travel up. Just like climbing a ladder... if it were feet only and involved kicking in a new rung for each step of the way.

Kiko keeps climbing up in her slowed vision, each step feeling like a whole minute. Monotonous at this speed even with a knot nearly stopping her ascent, but even that failed to hinder her plan. Upon reaching just a meter short of top, she feels this gust of wind that can only be a side swipe of her tree. Pity. She only needed another forty four centimeters for her ideal height, but she'll just have to jump off now.

Just as the tree collapses from the massive backhand, Kiko starts her ascent over the creature. She never did get quite so close a look at any Heartless before. It seems they actually do have hair follicles, albeit more of a peach fuzz than anything else. Still, fascinating knowledge in spite of its uselessness. This Heartless seems to be getting about a hundred and twenty six heart beats per minute... or whatever is pumping fluid into its head. Most of it seems to be going into that lobe, making it so visible to Kiko. Sure, it is raised about six millimeters, but to have another visual reference is a godsend. Makes this next part so easy.

Kiko pulls the trigger, the mechanical action of the gun triggering a long chain reaction of miniature cogs transmitting the signal to the firing hammer. As the pin strikes the shell casing, a set of chemical processes ignites the propellant and flings the bullet through space towards its final destination of that out of place organ. Kiko can even see the bullet penetrate the lobe, the slight crumpling of the shell triggering another chemical reaction within its metallic casing. The resultant explosion rips through the flesh of the giant, tearing apart tendons in its neck and cauterizing the edges. The tremors from all the nearby muscles shows this attack to be super effective.

With such an excellent penetration and large wound, it would be a shame to waste a perfectly good jump and three remaining bullets. Kiko aims just a little above the newly created hole and time her shots to hit just as the muscles contract. Spreading her bullets upwards in strictly controlled intervals, she blasts out a giant hole in the back of its head. Pieces of what appear to be bone break apart as a bright white sludge of some kind starts to ooze out. Maybe it was a bit unrealistic to expect these things to have a brain, but whatever. That has to hurt regardless of anatomy.

Kiko lands on the ground with a three point landing, the Heartless just starting its deathly explosion. She has no clue what type level this Heartless is, but Sora and Riku will certainly have to eat their words about her inability to do anything by herself. Shards of light penetrate the brightly glowing sphere of former Heartless life force, extending and terminating several meters away. It's actually kind of weird that this light is able to move so visibly slow even compared to this enhanced perception and then just stop at a predetermined length. Real light doesn't behave that way at all, but maybe this isn't light? Eventually, the not-light breaks apart as a large golden heart shaped thingy rises up.

But something else catches Kiko's eye. A single piece of brightly glowing coral starts to form from all the convergent sparks swirling around the air, its ridges unusually glassy smooth. Kiko gets an idea as it starts to fall down. Quickly reaching into her pocket, she pulls out the brooch with her thumb and index finger on either edge. The cackling of what feel like meticulously organized tiny cogs go through her hand as she swings the ugly piece of jewelry underneath the falling core. With a bright flash, the coral disintegrates in what seem like laser cut cubes as the gemstone gains some swirling, milky type substance within.

Kiko stuffs the brooch in her pants pocket, careful to not touch the gemstone lest something unexpected happens. Upon raising her arm, she notices a fresh blood stain on her sleeve. That's unusual. She should have felt that. A glance downwards reveals a couple puncture points in her chest, blood trickling out through small pieces of blackened shrapnel. She knew she should have gone the extra height lest something like this happens, but it seems too late now. As the blood loss starts to starve her brain, she begins to fall over just as she blanks out.


	53. Proto Gamer

Video games certainly are an interesting social phenomenon. Ever since their introduction to the public market in 1972, they have grown wildly, collapsed, and risen back from the ashes stronger than ever before. From Atari to Nintendo to Sega to Sony and all in between, the hardware alone has a rich history of variety and ingenuity. Many franchises like _Super Mario Bros._, _Final Fantasy_, and _The Sims_ have become just as iconic as the major film and television properties. Indeed, the industry makes more than movies and music. Hundreds of millions of people the world over have had their lives profoundly touched by the medium, with their presence a mainstay in many a childhood.

Yet, adults always had a difficult time with them right from the beginning and one is hard pressed to understand why. Perhaps it was their limited graphics, abstract controls, or seeming frivolity, but they just never seemed to catch on with people over the age of 30. It has only been recently that a sizable adult demographic has formed, but even they seem to branch out from their own childhoods. Start with _Pac-Man_, refine with _Street Fighter_, and before they know it, they're playing _Halo_ with people half their age. It almost seems like video game skills are only gained through youthful experimentation at times.

Even then, there are adults with no childhood experience that take to video games well and not just the casual simulation of the Nintendo Wii, either; there are grandmothers who play games like _Resident Evil 5_ and _Grand Theft Auto IV_, middle aged politicians stealing public funds to build high end gaming computers, and 41 year old mothers immediately delving into and progressing within action-RPGs without ever seriously playing a game in their life. These exceptions to the rules are quite fascinating and also baffling to the other adults around them. Even now, a husband can't understand his wife's sudden hobby.

"Angie, darling, where are you?" calls out a man in his early forties as he walks through his lavish home. While he isn't much to look at on his own, there's just something about his tuxedo that raises him above the average person. Perhaps clothes do make the man.

"I'm in here, Davie, darling," calls out a feminine voice. The man dubbed Dave walks through the well adorned hallways and emerges within the living room. Here she is, garbed in her best formal blue gown with jewelry to match while playing some video game. Seems just a little surprising, but Dave is already used to it.

"Ah," Dave says, "Still playing that game, I see."

"Of course," Angela responds passively, fiddling with the controller.

"I thought you'd be excited for tonight," Dave says, "It's been so long since you've last sung for an audience. You've always talked about how you wanted to get on stage again and feel those woodwind vibrations carry your voice to new heights."

"You're right, honey," Angela says, "But we are a few minutes early and I wanted to test this idea I have. Shouldn't be long."

"You know," Dave starts as he walks to a nearby couch and casually sits next to a black clad girl, "Maybe we were smothering Emily a little. Looking back, I can see it now. We wanted to help her because it always seemed like she wouldn't help herself. Remember that time I offered to get her martial arts lessons?"

"Indeed," Angela chuckles, "She thought we were just making fun of her for being 'weak'. I don't know, were we?"

"Of course not," Dave says, "I guess we didn't try to really understand her or her hobbies. You have the right idea with playing this game. We can talk with her about it when she gets back."

"She's not coming back," Angela sighs somberly.

"She just ran away," Dave says, "She'll come back on her own eventually. Just like that last time."

"It's been six weeks," Angela says, "The police issued a missing child alert to all the outlets from Lake Coast to Border Town. There's nothing but farmland for at least twenty miles in any direction and none of the farmers have reported anybody unusual showing up. But more importantly, her purse was just lying there on the side of the road with her money and some jewelry still inside. She wouldn't have ran away without it and someone mugging her wouldn't have just left it there. Nobody called in with a ransom yet, so it's only safe to assume some sicko took her away."

"But that's so dire," Dave continues, "I'm sure she'll come back. You know... the police called the other day and asked me if I knew why her purse was so radioactive."

"Come on," Angela says with a tinge of annoyance, "You think this is some science fiction story? That some meteor obliterated her and left her purse behind? Or maybe that some radioactive sludge monster ate her? Perhaps a time traveler kidnapped her? Maybe her future self, even?"

"I guess not," Dave sighs, starting to reach towards the nearby end table. The girl quickly squirms back into the seat to dodge his arm as he picks up a picture.

"Well, I'm ready," Angela says, tossing aside the controller as she stands up, "I'm going to give everyone the best concert ever. For Emily."

"For Emily," Dave reaffirms, walking alongside Angela as they exit the living room. A couple minutes go by before the black clad girl stands up from the couch, looking upwards towards the sky.

"Well, those are certainly horrible parents," the girl says, "To think: they're playing your video games in an attempt to understand you better? How could they ever understand the true you?"

The girl walks through the hallways, her fingers going over the surfaces as she examines the place. Such a curious reaction to a modest little suburban home.

"What is it you want?" the girl asks to no particular direction, "To be special? Not human? Find out one day that you're not the product of those horrible parents that feed you, shelter you, comfort you, unconditionally buy you video games, accept you for who you are, and stand up for you against bullies both student and teacher alike? God, that sounds positively primeval, doesn't it? What do you really want to be? A princess? A dragon? An alien? Someone with an exotic flair and extraordinary power either physical or social?"

The girl stops in front of a hanging picture frame, taking in the sight. Angela and Dave are standing with a ten year old Emily in front of a horse stable, smiling widely as their daughter looks kind of annoyed. The prominent placement of this one picture seems to suggest that this is about as happy as she looks, with the smaller pictures around confirming this suspicion.

"Poor, poor you," the girl laments, "Stuck as a tall human girl, unable to just use your intimidating stature for your own benefit and letting people walk all over you. The solution right in front of your face and you won't even consider it. Sucks to be you."

The girl makes her way back to the couch, casually falling back into a reclining position. With a sigh, she nods her head down and closes her eyes.

"But you have more pressing issues," the girl says dreamily, "Come on, wake up. Rise and shine to face the new day that awaits you in fantasy land. There's nothing here for you in this passing dream, anyway."

**--**

And so, Emily wakes up in that same sort of woozy trance that seems to dog her everywhere she goes. It's really quite disappointing when one thinks about it. Go in expecting a nice adventure with action, suspense, and romance just to get real danger, real pain, real injury, and the potential for real death. Instead of merely finding the hidden keystone, Emily has to contend with monstrous creatures of genuine threat trying to kill her in brutal ways. Rather than a graceful couple of slashes or an effortless spell of mass destruction, she has to fight with sheer determination and finds herself almost as damaged as her opponents in the end. All that to wake up in another hospital gown without anyone that matters close to her.

"Welcome back," Uina says with boredom from a corner of the room without glancing away from his project, "Get a good night's rest?"

"Where am I?" Emily asks as she rubs her forehead.

"The Four Winds, of course," Uina sighs, "You aren't really that inattentive, are you?"

"I guess..." Emily responds, feeling herself for her shrapnel wounds. Just like she expected, they seem to have all vanished with nary a scar to mark their former presence. Whether by her quick healing or the medical expertise of somebody on board, it's certainly impressive work.

"That was quite the foolhardy stunt you pulled back there," Uina comments, "I still have to admire your courage, though."

"Thank you," Emily says, the weight of her dream hanging heavily around her neck, "...I have something to tell you."

"Yes?" Uina says, finally looking up from his project. His sudden interest is rather unnerving to Emily, but she can't let that get to her.

"I've been having dreams..." Emily mutters, her voice wavering at some built up shame, "The girl in black is-"

"Talking to you?" Uina interrupts as he abruptly shoves through his mobile workstation, flasks shattering and brass clattering as he dashes towards some lockers.

"Well, yeah, sh-" Emily starts.

"**SORA! RIKU!**" Uina shouts, frantically grabbing one of his signature weapons.

"What ar-" Emily attempts, cut short as Uina shoves the business end of his brass baton right between her eyes.

"Silence!" Uina orders forcefully, "I don't want to see a single movement from you. Not even a single word. Do _not_ expect me to hesitate even for a second."

"What's going on..." Riku says as he runs into the room alongside his faithful companion.

"We have an avatar here," Uina announces.

"**DAMNIT!**" Sora loudly laments as his face contorts in rage.

"Now's not the time," Uina commands, "Sora, hold her down. Riku, the ethermute."

Sora reluctantly shoves Emily down into her bed by her shoulder and thigh, his strength surprising for a small frame like his. Riku walks over to a nearby glass framed box and elbows through it, grabbing a syringe of sickly brown fluid. All the while, Uina has taken out a scalpel and started cutting through Emily's gown. She'd almost feel humiliated if she wasn't so deathly scared by everybody's actions. Even as Uina starts dragging his finger over her chest, she wants nothing more than to scream out for an answer. Why are they doing this? Why have they stopped even acting like she's a human?

"Found it," Uina says, reaching back and taking the syringe from Riku.

"_Why_-" Emily shouts as her teacher stabs the needle into her heart with all his might. A sudden jolt goes through her body as she launches upwards, sitting up as her heavy breaths resonate throughout. Dizziness swarms through her as gravity tries to pull her back down, the pain all over her torso near unbearable. Amidst the torment and confusion, Kiko almost fails to notice the scene around her. Uina is back at that workstation while Sora and Riku are nowhere to be found, the area clean and the glass box intact. Was it all just a dream?

"Welcome back," Uina says without glancing away from his project, "I'd ask if you got a good night's rest, but you obviously didn't. Bad dream?"

"I guess you could say that," Kiko responds, rising up to look around. A surge of agony goes through her chest as she feels her skin tearing with every millimeter of incline. It takes all her effort not to scream out in agony.

"You might want to avoid that," Uina starts, "We treated you for multiple puncture wounds with extensive lung, kidney, stomach, colon, and liver damage along with severe hemorrhaging causing shock throughout. The sort of thing that would kill a normal person, but as we both know, you and I aren't normal by any definition of the word. You should be fine by the time we get back home. However, I do have to wonder how you managed to get bone fragments lodged in your chest like that."

"I think I shot it too close with an explosive bullet," Kiko responds, staring at the emergency medicine cabinet. She refuses to believe the vision was merely a dream. It was too real. Too vivid. But for her to go from completely uninjured to her current state just because of one shot is a bit hard to swallow. It's also hard to believe that Uina would be this good at acting oblivious. Still, there is one way to cut to the chase.

"Something bugging you?" Uina asks with his eyes still on his soldering project.

"What's eeth-uhr-moot?" Kiko carefully queries with fake syllabic stress. Perhaps not careful enough with Uina suddenly stopping his project and looking up with a piercing stare. Well, that's not a good sign. His darting eyes between her face and the cabinet is all the proof she needs.

"That is the most impressive eyesight ever," Uina says, relaxing back into his detached self, "Ethermute is the organization's dirty little secret. Our own personal Carnivore. Just fifty milligrams injected into the heart results in an immediate and irreversible nullification of all magic, quantum biology, and psionics while purging all non-human DNA within fifty alleles of four samples and parasites down to the last microbe. It is the single most effective weapon we have against doppelgangers, Nobodies, avatars, and other supernatural infiltrators."

"What makes it so dirty?" Kiko asks.

"Where to begin?" Uina ponders, "To start, it's a 14 base alkaline. While I doubt you remember your chemistry class, I can best sum it up by saying it's just as nasty as acid. The mortality rate from heart damage alone is around 30 percent. Even if you survive the injection and have it successfully cycle out of your system, it still leaves permanent tissue damage within the nervous system. The best case scenario is to be effectively lobotomized and emotionless for the rest of your life; worst case is stark raving insanity requiring institutionalization. Not exactly something you include in the press releases. We'd like to stop stocking it, but it's a necessary counter-measure and we've had no luck developing anything safer. At least it's better than our old solution."

"Do I even want to know?" Kiko asks.

"Oh, it's nothing special," Uina starts, making a sideways L shape with his thumb and index finger, "Just a good old fashioned hollow point bullet in the temple. Bang. Never under-estimate the basics."

"Where is everybody?" Kiko asks before this line can go any further.

"Oh, everybody already disembarked," Uina starts.

"Wait, we're home already?" Kiko asks with disbelief. Why didn't he wake her up sooner?

"Since a couple hours ago, yeah," Uina divulges casually, "Once you walk off this ship, you're going to have to submit to debriefing. Just the usual stuff. Repeat your given orders, describe the events, don't mention the prime core gathering and you're good."

"I got one while I was out there, I think," Kiko responds, fishing into her pants pocket. As she feels some long ridged object, she remembers how she stole one of the brass batons. It's a good thing Uina apparently didn't bother to search her.

"Don't take it out right now," Uina quickly commands, "You can just drop it off in a box on your way out. Anyway, all things considered, I think you did pretty well. Sure, you wasted a lot of expensive ammunition and got yourself mauled, but nobody's perfect."

"Thanks, I guess," Kiko says.

"Well, I have to get going," Uina says, rising out of his seat, "Duty calls and all that jazz. I think you should be able to walk out in an hour or two. Outsiders like you and I recover pretty quickly. I'll keep a drone posted to escort you for debriefing. Don't push yourself."

With that, Uina walks off the ship with his usual lack of flair, leaving Kiko to think about her situation. It would be unwise to tell anyone about her visions if all she can expect is a syringe in the heart or a bullet to the brain, but to think that she might be that dangerous by presence alone is a scary thought. She'll just have to research a solution on her own without anybody noticing. In the mean time, at least she has what might be the start of some magical ability. Feeling it within her pockets, the lack of any unusual sensation reveals to her that she she has no clue how to actually use the thing. Then again, even if she figures it out, what really differentiates it from conventional weaponry, anyway?

"Oh, one last thing," Uina announces as he walks back in, startling Kiko, "It seems you got some fan mail from Mr. Le Bon. It came in... 'Sora's' 10,000 munny purchase. Never knew he liked music that much. Have fun."

Uina casually flings the dark red envelope towards Kiko as he walks out, once again leaving her to her devices. She forgot all about that whole paycheck deal. Kind of regretful, since she didn't even get to spend her's properly. Maybe she'll have a future use of the card for... something. Well, at least it comes with a wallet. Much easier to also remember the ID if it has some bulk to it. Not wasting any more time, Kiko opens the envelope to find a pretty fancy letterhead from SLB Enterprises.

My dearest Queen of the Stone Age,

Welcome back from your no doubt dangerous and exciting mission. I'm glad you're safe and sound. Maybe. You can still at least see, I hope. If someone else is reading this (with or without your knowledge), I'd like to mention that I'm a very rich man, I'm aware of the local privacy laws, and the maroon envelope isn't just a coincidence.

Moving on, I thought over what you said about your origin and the dimensions. Quite a marvel to meet someone from the same century. While I find it unlikely you'd really go to so much effort for an album, I can recognize a good opportunity when I see it. Even if all I got was the one band's discography, I have to believe they have some talent to inspire such an attempt. I'll do what I can to get some research and development on trans-dimensional portal. Hopefully, a fly won't enter the machine and cause you to mutate into a hideous monster.

Joking aside, if you need something, just call me. Keep my card on your fridge or something. I have daily shipments across the galaxy and stock in a nice hotel on every world that matters. After all, even an eternal life is too short to find all the presidential suites booked. Just give me some advance notice and I'll arrange for travel and accommodations where ever you want to go.

Outsiders like you and I need to stick together, after all. An eternity of unfriendliness is no fun no matter how you look at it. Believe me, I know. I was married once.

Signed,  
Simon Le Bon  
Owner and Chairman Executive Officer of SLB Records

P.S. I find it hard to believe you're 15 with assets like that.


	54. Moment of Glory

If there's one thing the average archeology adventure gets horribly wrong, it's the length of time required to find a hidden artifact. Real archeology is a process that involves years of research, thousands of kilometers of travel, and lots of dead ends all over. It can take years or even decades to find a rumored artifact within the confines of a single city; imagine this spread across a whole galaxy. Certainly far from the glorified scavenger hunt implied by the Indiana Jones series. As such, it's no surprise that nearly three months later has produced not even the slightest clue on the next keystone. After all, it would have to be truly well hidden to escape so many grave robbers over the millennia.

During this time, good old Kiko has been pretty busy. Recognizing that her only real shot at getting Riku's attention is on the field of valor, she spends her free time in the gym pumping iron and running circles. That good old systematic damage of the body to force its adaptation during repair. Unfortunately for her, she started at a plateau when she entered the universe and that's where she remains. No added strength, no muscle development, not even any difference in the aches. Just the same old performance at the same old resistances.

Still, if she just gave up after only three months, she'd only be proving herself unworthy. No, she must go on. Break that barrier, surpass her limit, and demonstrate herself exceptional enough for Riku's consideration. Even if she doesn't ever really progress, her work ethic and dedication might seep into her other actions and offer insight into her capabilities. Battle isn't quite as brainless as the media would have one believe, after all.

On this beautiful Saturday afternoon, rather than go out to the Radiant Garden festival, she has decided to stay in the weight room and see if she can break the 60 pound barrier on her bicep curl. After failing to surpass her 120 pound chest press or 100 pound shoulder press, it seems only fitting to go for the last major upper body exercise. If she can't lift a fully loaded M61 Vulcan or effortlessly wield a 0.7x1.8 meter heavy sword, what good is she compared to the mountain splitting powers of Riku?

But before she can do any of that, she needs to get this hunk of metal in front of her face. She already ate her high protein, high carbohydrate breakfast and lunch while drinking lots and lots of water. All the usual preparation short of those performance enhancing drugs no responsible military would supply. Keeping in mind the no swing rule, her sheslowly but surely starts to bend her elbow. The usual pain shoots through her muscles, but if she lets that dissuade her, how will she ever progress? She just needs to keep going, keep going...

"Hello, Kiko," Riku casually greets as he walks in, mildly startling Kiko into spinning to face. Pretty bad timing, too, with the dumbbell slipping out of her grasp and barely missing her foot by a millimeter. Lucky.

"Sorry," Kiko says, looking down as she reaches for the freshly embedded iron. That's definitely going to leave a mark. For some reason, Riku seems to be wearing this thick golden amulet over his usual clothing. It's hard to miss even from the corner of the eye.

"60 pounds, huh?" Riku comments, walking past towards a collection of barbells, "That seems kind of heavy for your training. I thought you were on the speed and gymnastics track?"

"I wasn't getting any better at it," Kiko starts, heaving the dumbbell out of its crater and starting back towards the rack, "I can run for dozens of kilometers without getting tired, do fifty one-arm chin-ups in a row, and climb a straight wall with regular boots, but I can't lift a Vulcan. What good am I if I can't use a real weapon?"

"A Vulcan?" Riku asks, apprehensive, as he starts clattering together a weight, "But that's a heavy vehicle weapon."

"I know," Kiko says, walking towards the rack while trying to avoid looking at Riku, "I did lots of tests in the simulation room. It tore everything to shreds."

"Of course it did," Riku comments, "A 250 pound machine tossing up walls of lead will do that... want to spot for me?"

"Huh?" Kiko says, unsure of what he's talking about, "...oh, yeah. Sure."

"Thank you," Riku says with a last click of a fastener. As Kiko walks over to him, she can't help but notice just how different he seems. Along with this new jewelry, his physique just seems less sculpted and more puffy; almost pudgy, even. Certainly not the pinnacle of male humanity like she knows and loves. And yet, it isn't this sudden softness so much as the weight he has set up that bothers her. She knows from experience that he can burst through several tons of hard granite. Why is there only about a hundred pounds on the barbell? And he asked her to spot him on this?

"You seem... different," Kiko comments uncomfortably, assuming a position over the bench.

"It's the amulet," Riku starts, lying down and scooting underneath the barbell, "We got it about a week ago. It's great. Completely inhibits my keyblade and all its power as long as I wear it."

"How is that great?" Kiko asks, unsure of why he would ever do something this stupid. Who wants to give up such power?

"I can work on my real self," Riku says, straining to lift the barbell, "The keyblade is great and everything, but it doesn't really make me stronger. It remolds me and lets me defy physics, but it doesn't use my muscles at all. Take it away and I'm just a normal person who hasn't been going to the gym."

"Why not just keep the keyblade?" Kiko asks, lightly touching the bottom of the bar as Riku prepares himself, "If it's already making you strong, why does it matter?"

"But again, what if I lose it?" Riku posits, slowly lowering the weight towards his chest, "I'd just be a weak nearly-17-year-old boy like everybody else and probably couldn't take on anything stronger than a Soldier. Even with those, I don't know if I could break the flesh; much less cut deep enough to kill. If I really want to be worth my title of 'Savior of the Universe', I have to be strong both with and without my source of power."

"I won't let Maleficent take your keyblade," Kiko reassures, finally figuring out the source of his concern. For whatever reason, Riku ignores her as he struggles to get the bar back up. He grimaces as his arms start wavering, the weight straining his tendons and bending his wrists backwards. Sweat flows from his every pore as he softly grunts. It almost sounds like a whimper in the face of his inanimate metallic oppressor.

Suddenly, his arms give out and the weight comes crashing down towards him. It's only through Kiko's quick reflexes that she manages to stop it just short of crushing her idol's ribs. It almost seems disappointing how manageable it feels in her hands, with barely any effort required to put it back on the rack. She would almost think he's faking it, but his heavy breathing and the rubbing of his biceps shoots that idea down. A pretty pathetic sight compared to his reputation, to be certain. After a little less than a minute of gasping, he sits back up and turns to face the bar.

"105 pounds..." Riku muses as he glances over the bar, his eyes stopping on each of the disks. Kiko just watches her hero as he stretches his arms over the next minute. She isn't sure how to even respond to this. Here he is, defeated by a weight that didn't even phase her. Is this the real Riku? But then again, it's probably worth considering his position. He's had the keyblade for some indeterminate amount of time and only recently got this amulet to nullify it. It's only fair to expect him to be a little out of shape. In fact, doing as well as he did with over a hundred pounds is downright admirable. After another minute, Kiko finally feels discomforted enough by the silence to come up with a break.

"How much can you lift with the keyblade?" she asks.

"More than the bar can support," Riku starts, standing up and walking around slowly, "Easily over 1600 pounds. I lifted a dune buggy once."

"Holy crap..." Kiko says, trying to visualize her hero lifting a car. Seems a little macho, but definitely far from implausible.

"It doesn't mean as much as you'd think," Riku starts, "Physical type IV Heartless can go well over a ton and that's not even scratching the surface. I've personally seen ones that can lift and toss whole skyscrapers without breaking a sweat."

"And I can't even lift a good weapon..." Kiko sighs dejectedly. Riku rolls his eyes as he steps on a treadmill, keying in some stuff on the computer.

"Everyone has their talents," Riku starts, jogging at a fairly decent clip, "I would have thought you'd realize this after four months, but I guess not. Are you even trying any more?"

"...why aren't you with Sora and Kairi?" Kiko asks in a desperate plea for a distraction. If the conversation can go south this fast, maybe she can divert it away just as quickly.

"The festival is for a week," Riku says, "How are you missing your talents?"

"What talents?" Kiko starts, forced to accept that she's not ducking out of this one, "I die in the simulation room all the time. I never win large battles with knives or pistols and I only sometimes win with a sniper rifle. I tested all the weapons and the only one I ever win enough with is the Vulcan."

"Ever consider the possibility you're not supposed to fight the Heartless?" Riku asks, directly and succinctly.

"...huh?" Kiko says, confused. Not fight the Heartless? Balderdash.

"You're being trained as a specialist," Riku starts, "Reconnaissance, infiltration, human assassination. Not front lines or heavy weapons, yet that's how you're acting."

"But that's what this is about, right?" Kiko says, "Fighting Heartless?"

"We're not fighting the Heartless," Riku starts, "The Heartless are the easiest things in the universe. They're completely undisciplined, unorganized, and have no concept of target differentiation. They have no training, no overarching goals, no cultural attachments, not even a self-preservation instinct. Pure chaos. Do you know why we need an extensive, expensive training program like this?"

"I don't know," Kiko says, trying to think of what the program is for if not to fight Heartless. Must be a trick question. King Mickey himself said this is about combating them, after all.

"Guess," Riku says, annoyed.

"They get so big?" Kiko answers.

"They become more docile the larger they get," Riku retorts, "Try again."

"There are so many of them?" Kiko posits.

"You've seen me fight before," Riku starts, "I can kill about four or five a swing. Come on, think. Why are they so dangerous?"

"...because Maleficent is siccing them on us?" Kiko randomly guesses, "I don't-"

"You got it," Riku interrupts, continuing his jog. Kiko isn't quite sure why it should matter. Maybe they can direct the Heartless to attack specific targets, but surely, that doesn't somehow make them stronger. And she isn't quite sure what he means by 'docile'. They all seem pretty vicious to her. Another awkward minute of near silence goes by as Riku keeps up his slightly wobbly jog.

"But that just means we have to be stronger," Kiko starts, "I'm not going to beat Maleficent or Mint or that big electric guy with wimpy weapons. I need a real one."

"You're really trying my patience," Riku sighs, "All our patience, actually. Mickey... King Mickey told me he's considering just handing you over to the police. He said it's like nothing has changed these past few months and you're just wasting our time and money."

"But I'm trying so hard," Kiko starts out of frustration, "I spend so much time in here so I can be the best fighter possible."

"And you're still missing the point," Riku starts, shaking his head in disappointment, "You can be an incredible scout and assassin. Without any magic at all, you're already the fastest human enrolled."

"No, I'm not," Kiko protests, irritation at the baseless pandering getting to her, "I've seen you and Sora fight. I can't do anything nearly that fast."

"We're not really that fast," Riku continues, "Maybe it just seems that way because we don't follow the same laws of physics. I'm sure you don't believe me, though, so how about a match?"

"...huh?" Kiko says, now completely lost in the conversation.

"A race to the front gate," Riku starts, stopping his treadmill and letting it gently slide him off, "You never timed it, did you?"

"No," Kiko admits. How would somebody time that, anyway? There are a lot of different paths.

"How about this," Riku starts, "If I beat you, you have to stop this big chaingun bullet deluge warrior champion queen crap and start focusing on your real training."

"I'll give it up if you just ask," Kiko says, deciding she doesn't want to be beaten into submission, "You don't need to-"

"If you win..." Riku interrupts, pausing for a few seconds as he looks down and away, "...I'll go on a date with you."

"...what?" Kiko says, taken off guard.

"Meet me at the north tower in an hour," Riku quickly says as he dashes out of the room, a slight wobble to his step.

**--**

As Kiko walks into her room, she thinks hard on what Riku's sudden offer is supposed to mean. Is he trying to trick her into something? Get her to reveal something about herself in the process? It just seems so unlike him to make a bet like this, so there must be more to it than that. Maybe he's trying to see if she'll honestly believe she can defeat him if he dangles a metaphorical carrot in front of her face? That would be kind of an insult to her intelligence and show a total lack of faith.

But a more distressing thought is the possibility that he might be right. What's even the point of having magic powers if a mere human can exceed them? It's not even like he is just some apprentice warlock or something; this is Riku, savior of the universe and bearer of the legendary keyblade... a legendary keyblade, anyway. Sometimes, it's so easy to forget about boyish, naive Sora at times like this. After all, Riku is so much more talented, more powerful, and otherwise just flat out more potent than Sora could ever hope to be.

Regardless, it's a pretty silly notion to think she can win in a fair contest, but he still shrugged off her direct offer to stop this side training. It's as though he wants the race regardless of outcome. That opens up the possibility that he might throw the match for whatever reason. A date would be the end result, so it raises its own questions. If this is to raise her self-esteem to get her to perform better, why not just ask her out directly? Sure, there are probably better ways of improving morale than a sham date, but such a ritualistic hurdle is rather pointless. However, what if he does really want a date? Why mask it behind some trial as a reward for a normally impossible task? If anything, it would be a crappy preface to a date and just make it feel like an obligation rather than a recognition of mutual affection.

Such a hassle over some side training. Why doesn't he praise her for going to so much trouble to try and be a better fighter on her own accord? She put forth the research into better fighting tactics and has already come to accept that magic is not in her future. It's not like she's getting any progress with this stolen baton, after all. About the closest thing to a magic trick she can manage is to get it to be slightly warm to the touch, but that could just be from grasping it for so long. No fire, no balls of destruction, not even that taser effect Uina once used on her. No reward at all for so much risk.

Then the solution hits her: why not just concede the match? And if he still wants to race, just cut the possible reward of a date? If he really wants to date her, he can ask her like a normal human being. She needs Riku to genuinely recognize her to be worthy of being his girlfriend and having the date be the reward to some contest is just wrong. It wouldn't be a real date, now, would it?

After a little, she remembers what she came all the way to her room for: climbing gloves. Maybe it's a bit pointless to grab them now that she has decided the race shouldn't happen, but whatever. She'll leave a good impression if she comes prepared regardless of her intent, after all. Slip into her stealth outfit, put on some combo grip and bounce boots, use some anti-chafe cream on her joints, and drink some water. Riku gave her an hour to prepare and she'll want it to look like she used it to the fullest extent. Preparation is 90 percent of performance, after all.

With everything set up for her big race, she starts on her way to the north tower while taking in the sights. If she's going to have to race Riku after all, she needs to think of a path and methodology to master her terrain to the best of her capabilities. Riku has the advantage of being able to both jump and drop several stories, so he'll overtake her at the elevator. However, who says she has to use the elevator properly? All the shafts have emergency ladders on either side and four sides of horizontal metallic girders every two meters, so she could probably just bounce downwards. Kind of amusing how she used to be afraid of heights for about a week, but she's pretty confident in both her luck and the school's safety systems to prevent any untimely death.

Passing through the gate and going over the bridge, the sight of the unmapped spires gives Kiko a new idea. If she's supposed to be a scout and infiltrator instead of a fighter, why not use this skill on the castle itself? It really bothers her to have so much uncharted territory connected to her residence and there is some vague line in the manual about finding ways to incorporate your skills into your regular life. It's the perfect excuse.

Another casual walk through the overly elaborate hallways later and she's at the north bridge with Riku waiting. Here's the man that she truly admires, his physique back to its supple but firm perfection. Such sweet flesh, his every feature sculpted to the height of human design. One could lose herself in his arms for hours. Why he would ever willingly choose to deny his true self and block his keyblade when he has so much is anybody's guess.

"Welcome," Riku announces, "You're here pretty early. Any questions before we start?"

"I don't want to race," Kiko announces, "I'll stop my side training and focus on my 'real' skills."

"That's great," Riku remarks, "I still want a race."

"Well..." Kiko starts, uncomfortably shifting around as she feels her courage fading, "You don't have to give me anything if I win. Just a race to see who's faster."

"Pardon?" Riku says, looking at her pensively.

"You don't need to offer a reward to get me to go along," Kiko acknowledges softly, "If you want to go out with me, just ask."

"Well, then," Riku says, apparently ignoring that statement, "The rules are simple. Get from this archway to the front gate without setting off any of the school's safety systems. I have the stopwatch. Ready?"

"I guess," Kiko says, walking next to Riku and standing by his side inside the archway. As much as she'd rather avoid this, she can't exactly argue with Riku. It's not like this is some completely unreasonable request.

"Okay, on the beep," Riku says, fiddling with something in one of his pockets and then dropping to a crouch. Kiko follows suit, thinking on her final plan as she waits for that vague signal. Another major hang-up might be the south tower, but she kind of doubts Riku will jump across the gap. It wouldn't exactly be fair.

_Beeeeeee~p._

With that, Kiko starts her mad dash to the front gate. Right off the bat, Kiko has taken the lead by about a meter, but she won't get to appreciate it with this branching of paths. Since their shortest paths have them traversing different directions of the circular hallway, they are getting some alone time. This will probably be the last time she'll see Riku until the end, but no matter. She promised to do her best, so it shall be done.

One of the disadvantages of having to run around a perpetual corner is the angle and minor G-force making her feel like she's going to topple over. She'd almost be concerned, but she was built for this sort of thing and gets through it just fine as a result. She approaches the south tower and finds Riku not anywhere nearby. He's probably way ahead of her by now, but no matter. She just continues over the bridge like nothing is out of the ordinary. She emerges within the south tower and starts running around the half-circle, mentally pumping herself up for the elevator shaft. Going to take all her confidence to get through that.

Just as Kiko passes the midway mark of the half-circle, she hears a loud huff from somewhere behind. A quick glance over reveals Riku arcing through the air with his legs raised to his chest. How the hell did he get over there? It's just not possible he failed to keep up... is it? Well, with that running leap directly across the gap, he has both pulled way ahead and demonstrated his seriousness. She was half-expecting him to limit himself for her sake, but apparently not.

Kiko follows behind, her feet hitting the ground ever so slightly harder as she pushes against her boundary. She just has to hold her head lower, lean her body forward, and think of it more as jumping at an angle than running to get better results. Riku has just burst through the door, but if she just speeds up ever so slightly, she can get through before it slams on her. She can afford it with the gravity doing most of the work for the elevator drop, thus offering some respite.

With only centimeters to spare, she gets through the door just in time to see Riku casually dive down an open shaft. Just as expected. Luckily, she wasn't mis-remembering the structure of the elevator shafts and the two ladder system is ready for her theory. With nothing to lose but her pride, she leaps towards the ladder on her right. She slightly damps her fall a little as she kicks off a rung, launching herself towards the other side. It's actually surprisingly easy for someone of her dexterity so long as she doesn't think of the height. Barely any timing involved.

Of course, it's not the trip down that's tricky so much as the transition back to the horizontal plane. She could probably slow herself down significantly during the last few bounces, but that would take too long and Riku is already past the shaft. The cage structure gives her an idea: what if she swings off a beam to direct her momentum through the door? Seems simple enough. With that last bounce, she flings herself towards the beam with body parallel to the ground and arms outstretched. Outside of the sheer, unmitigated pain that comes from grabbing a relatively thin metal beam at such a speed, it seems to go pretty smoothly. She just barely misses knocking her head on the top of the arch and lands on her feet a good ten meters inside. After the smallest delay admiring her feat, she continues her dash.

Emerging within the spiral room reveals Riku diving towards the pool of water. While no doubt impressive, even Kiko can recognize the impracticality of this course of action. Without wasting any time, she starts her own genius plan. Flinging herself over the guard rail, she lets herself drop a story before grabbing the next one down. This method must be at least as fast as Riku's dolphin-like maneuver because he's still in her sight as she reaches the bottom. He's even tracking wet footprints across the carpet. How rude.

With only a small detour around a staircase breaking up the straight run from this point on, it's time to see whether Riku's claim has any merit. Kiko starts pushing herself harder and harder as she runs as fast as possible, slowly but steadily closing the gap of about 30 meters. She runs through the elaborate foyer of yellow wallpaper and bronze statues, Riku coming up closer with each step. She's kind of disappointed by his wide arc around the staircase, but it's his own choice to waste time like this. Kiko passes the stairs with her shoulder lightly brushing the side, getting halfway across the lobby before Riku bursts open the front door. Only fifteen meters to close now.

Kiko puts forth her full effort into a sprint as she passes the door. To her total shock, she can probably win this pretty easily. The front courtyard is about 150 meters from front door to gate and she now only has ten meters of gap to close. Easy-peasy. Without much fanfare, Kiko passes by Riku with a good forty meters of distance left. At this speed, it only takes a couple seconds before she passes through the front gate. Victory at last. Kiko trips over herself as she tries to stop, rolling harmlessly on the ground a couple times before pushing herself back to her feet and sliding to a stop. Not very graceful, but she's not used to running this fast. Riku comes through the gate, casually stopping on a dime. Show off.

"Good enough for you?" Riku asks out of the blue.

"...huh?" Kiko says.

"You beat my best," Riku starts, "You thought I was going to cheap out, didn't you? Let you win?"

"...I guess I did," Kiko says, just a little uncomfortable about this whole affair. There's just no reasonable way she won on her own accord, but Riku really did seem to go at his full capability. If he threw the match, he did so very convincingly. It would be nice if he would just say something, but another thirty seconds pause finally gets to Kiko. As much as she likes Riku, it just creeps her out to be around him when he's like this.

"I'm going back to my room," Kiko announces, starting on her path back up.

"Wait," Riku calls out.

"Yes?" Kiko says, turning to face her idol.

"Er..." Riku says, looking really uncomfortable as he avoids eye contact, "...would you like to go... with me... to-the-festival-tomorrow?"

"Pardon?" Kiko says. Riku turns his face completely away, breathing calmly as he focuses on something. Kiko has no clue why he's acting so odd, but it would be nice if he's genuine about this offer. Finally, recognition for her as a genuine person and all she had to do was disprove the absolute power of the keyblade. Feels almost bittersweet. After a little, Riku stands up straight and turns with the most serene of expressions.

"I would be honored if you would go with me to the festival," Riku starts, his face not showing a whole lot of interest or emotion.

"...really?" Kiko says, her hopes and dreams finally coming to fruition, "Is this a date?"

"...yes," Riku answers with the most minor of twitches, short and to the point, "I'll stop by your place around 11:00. That okay?"

"...yes!" Kiko says joyfully, smiling widely at Riku. She can already feel her face get hot with blood, but what does she care? If she can't allow herself to be seen flush, this would never work out.

"Well, then," Riku says, clapping his hands together, "I'll see you tomorrow. I'm... really looking forward to it."

"So am I!" Kiko announces joyfully, imagining all the possibilities of her very first date. Such a long and winding road to this most glorious of landmarks and yet, the journey has only begun.

"See you later," Riku breathes somberly, starting on his walk back to the castle.


	55. Old Friends, Old Enemies

It's finally here. After four long months of tireless effort, Kiko has finally reached Riku's heart and proven herself worthy of his consideration. After all the off-hand remarks and cold shoulders and general avoidance that Riku has subjected her, he has finally let up and opened himself to the possibility of romance. Four long months of frustration have truly paid off.

But it hardly ends there. Oh, no. Getting that first date in a proper womanly fashion might be the hardest part, but there are a hundred different things that go into a date. Before any preparation can be done, she needs to think about what sort of impression she should be aiming to impart. She still isn't quite sure where Riku's tastes lean, so the best idea is probably something a bit simpler for her appearance. Less frills, less layers, less gems. Sure, she doesn't have any gems... beside that lapis lazuli brooch, but that's much too ugly to include as part of any outfit.

But that's getting ahead of herself. The big question before anything else can be decided is whether to go with shorts or a skirt. Which does Riku find more attractive? She doesn't have the slightest clue and her own preference would be shorts, but she knows she has no real fashion sense. It's probably a big reason she got bullied in her old life, after all. Maybe she should think of how to be distinctive compared to her usual self? She almost always wears shorts or pants, so she should wear a skirt for a change.

Things get simpler from that point onwards. She only has four outfits with a skirt: one is dark green, one is dark red, and the other two are different textures of the same dark blue. Unfortunately, the dark red dress was probably a bad investment considering her hair color. It made sense from the context of her old hair color, but a contrast between a dark red dress and her dark blue hair is not what she wants. At the same time, either of the two dark blue dresses will make her hair look like a part of the outfit and that's also a big no-no. Not if she wants Riku to see her as someone wearing the clothes instead of simply being them.

That leaves the dark green outfit. Green is a good color because it gives off a calm, relaxed, and receptive image that suggests growth, renewal, and life. Someone who will understand him, care for him, remain loyal, and mold herself to his needs. Combined with her blue hair, it evokes nature and harmony. With both as dark colors, they suggest a desire to not be noticed by anybody but the one she decides to approach; a desire for Riku and Riku alone.

Everything else falls into place from there. She doesn't even have to think about whether or not to go with heels: she has none. She's already at a disadvantage with her height setting her eye level just a little short of Riku's. After all, men find that kind of threatening. So long as she slouches a little, makes a point to sit before Riku and rise after him, and keeps her voice below his, she can beat this. With that in mind, she dons her thin strappy sandals.

With the clothes settled, the last topic to be tackled is make-up. She has never really learned how to properly use the stuff for beauty before, so it's probably better not to even try. It's a shame, since her stealth class goes into detail how to change her appearance but offers no perspective on just looking better as herself. She's only used to foundation, but even that is largely unnecessary with her unnaturally perfect skin. Whatever. Less work for her.

With everything prepared and still seven minutes to go, she sits down on the couch and thinks about her first move. Those couple seconds when she reveals herself are the most vital part of the occasion. More than the activities, more than the conversation, more than even the farewell. What would Riku find better, though? Should she allow him to open the door so she can pose or should she open it herself? She gets a small startle as some clicking sounds emanate from the door.

"Rye-koo," says that harsh robotic voice. She completely forgot about that whole system with her lack of visitors, but she now has the problem of what to do with Riku waiting. Why is he six minutes early? Surely, he has more grace than that? He must have just misgauged his walk. Kiko hops over and opens the door to reveal Riku... wearing his usual stuff. White and yellow jacket vest with poofy blue jeans and white sneakers. Why doesn't he wear something different for this?

"Hello, Kiko," Riku starts, his face just its usual passive self, "How are you?"

"I'm good," Kiko says, doing her best to sound as friendly as possible while standing with her hands clasped in front of her stomach, "How are you?"

"Okay, I guess," Riku answers, glancing over Kiko's shoulders, "Do you need anything else?"

"Not really," Kiko says, a bit disappointed by the lack of attention to her outfit. Does she not look like she put a lot of effort into it or something?

"Shall we?" Riku says in a vaguely inviting manner, motioning outwards with his outstretched arm.

"Yeah," Kiko says, walking out the door. Riku silently lowers his arm and starts walking towards the elevator, Kiko taking a few long strides to get by his side. What the hell kind of greeting is that? That's just a disappointing way to start a first date, but she can't fault him. It's probably his very first date as well and they're both used to each others' presence. He's probably just too relaxed to think anything of this. Still, why no comment about her dress?

As the two pass over the bridge, Kiko decides to let Riku continue the lead on this date. He can choose to talk about whatever he wants, whenever he wants. After all, it's not like Kiko really has anything to her life that really matters any more. The tall but meek girl with few friends and plenty of enemies died when she came to this universe. Riku doesn't need to know anything about Emily; he only needs to know about Kiko.

With the two now at the elevator, the silence finally gets to her. She'd much rather not break her vow so quickly, but this is much too awkward.

"What do you think of my outfit?" Kiko asks as Riku starts up the elevator. He glances over Kiko while the whoosh of the wind drowns out any chance of an audible response. As it comes to a stop, Riku glances back over her shoulder.

"You look okay," Riku comments, starting up his walk again as Kiko follows, "Green seems a little odd on you. I guess I always thought blue was your color."

"I wanted to try something else," Kiko says, unsure of how to respond to that. She's already starting to regret her choice of outfit now that Riku has displayed a preference, but she's not at fault. This is the first time he's ever said anything on the topic. She'll make a point to wear nothing but blue whenever she has a choice. Another awkward silence goes by before Riku continues.

"I guess that dress makes me feel uncomfortable," Riku says as the two walk into the spiral atrium, "I'm just thinking about your side-training and how it would make you more muscular. Puffier arms, muscle grooves, that sort of thing. Combined with your dress, it just kind of reminds me of something."

"What do you..." Kiko starts, the realization hitting her like a sack of bricks, "...oh, god, I'm so sorry. I'll go change."

"Wait," Riku calls out as Kiko starts to jog back, "You don't have to change. It's fine."

"No, it isn't," Kiko says, stopping in her tracks, "I look like that horrible person."

"No, you don't," Riku says, "Her outfit is bright and gaudy. Your's is dark and tasteful. You don't really look much like her at all."

"Are you sure?" Kiko asks, turning to face her idol, "I can change."

"It's fine," Riku starts, "Why let someone ruin a whole color for you? Besides, if Maleficent keeps her on the same leash she kept me, nobody else is going to even think of such a comparison."

"Well..." Kiko says, unsure of what to say, "...okay."

"Thank you," Riku says, motioning back outwards, "Shall we?"

"Sure," Kiko says, resuming the walk. That was certainly an uncomfortable revelation, but he's right. Why let a color be ruined by association? Besides, green is the standard military uniform color. She can't imagine everybody as being evocative of Mint.

The two continue their stride through the yellow hallway without any more discussion. Time to change that.

"What do you mean by 'leash'?" Kiko asks, "Did she cast a spell on you or something?"

"No," Riku starts as they emerge into the main hallway, "I meant it metaphorically. She finds orphans and outcasts with dark magical ability. People that won't be missed and the more emotionally damaged, the better. She takes them in with open arms, promising to make them her apprentice and keep them sheltered. She then stops them from seeing other people while teaching them to hate the rest of the universe just like her. Show them the latest wars, the ruined cities, the morgues. Only when she thinks she has complete control will she send them on missions."

"Oh..." Kiko says, unsure how to respond to that. Maleficent never seemed too convincing in her eyes. She just looks so completely evil and makes such hollow statements. How anyone could fall for her lies is a big mystery.

"I'll never forget what she had me do," Riku starts, "When she took me in, she had this other apprentice. Some girl, couldn't have been any older than 12."

"I don't think I want to hear this," Kiko says, recognizing the direction of this story and realizing it would cast a pall over the whole day, "What kind of festival is this?"

"Some inter-galactic culture thing," Riku answers as they exit outside to the bright and sunny day, "I think it's more for trading between the allied worlds. See any of the advertisements yet?"

"No," Kiko admits. She doesn't watch television or browse the internet and she hasn't been outside the castle in a long time, so she has no reason to have seen anything.

"I guess you'll see when we get there," Riku says, falling silent once more. With such a vague description of the festival and a lack of conversation topics, Kiko is just going to have to accept this pause. Something about the 'trade between worlds' brings to mind that bazaar back on Discord. She can't imagine a place with piles of raw materials being terribly fascinating, but there are probably plenty of other things going on. Bring enough people together and more interests will be represented.

In this disagreeable silence, Kiko and Riku walk through the packed streets. Music is playing all around, with bright fanfares clashing with moody symphonies and hopping promenades within the same city blocks. Even that is barely audible over the constant din of conversation, with terms like 'contract', 'deficit', and 'even flow' coming up surprisingly often. She never really thought about it before, but it does seem kind of weird how everybody speaks English in spite of signs with a dozen languages a piece. The tidy and messy alike all have their shops, with beautifully adorned stands full of velvet and silver residing next to hastily constructed canopies over a pile of merchandise. Seemingly everything one could ever want to legally purchase is here, with what appears to be signs of a black market stemming from the more dubious looking stands. Certainly a far cry from the Taste of Hometown.

Riku seems to have a pretty specific idea of where he wants to go. Without a word, he leads Kiko around through winding alleys and crowded district to some humble looking clothing shop. How it can stay in business with such scrappy looking clothing is anybody's guess. The material is scratchy, full of holes, and outrageously priced. Probably exactly why they're practically flying off the shelves, with people buying a dozen at a time. The clerk, some tall husky man with short curly hair and a full beard, seems to find some interest in Riku.

"Ahh, Riku!" shouts the blithe mountain of a man as he moves the whole counter out of his way, "Good ta see ya! 'ow ya bin?"

"Pretty good," Riku answers as the hulk slaps him hard on the back, staggering him a bit, "How about you?"

"Good, good," the man says, a jolly expression on his face, "Wut can ol' Basil do fer ya?"

"I have a proposition to buy some 'shawls'," Riku says in an awkward manner, "Is the back room open?"

"Of course," the man named Basil answers, motioning towards this door hidden behind some rough drapes, "Anyt'ing fer me main mon."

Kiko tries to think of an objection to this, but finds herself speechless. Why is Riku doing business with this incredibly shady man during her date? This isn't a business trip. However, he did ask to go to the festival and there's nothing that shows he's going to just take her to stuff like this all day. Without saying a word, she follows behind as Riku and Basil enter this small room. It just appears to be some wooden shack, light pouring in from the cracks. The only features within are a hanging fluorescent light, a long table with a metal top, some hastily constructed wooden chairs, and the same poor quality cloth hanging over the walls. One can practically see waves from the sweltering heat.

"'ey!" Basil grunts hostily, starting to approach Kiko, "Wut arr _you_ doin'?!"

"She's okay," Riku quickly announces, "She's with me."

"Oh," Basil says in a friendlier voice, motioning towards the chairs, "Come on in! Take uh load off!"

With apprehension running through her, Kiko takes a seat in one of the wooden chairs next to Riku. Already, she can feel a bunch of splinters embed themselves in her skin. Such great hospitality. Basil casually sits on the table, resting his stubbly arms on his knees.

"Sooo..." Basil starts, glancing around the room, "Wut can ey do fer ya?"

"Your two shipments of assualt and sniper rifles..." Riku trails off, giving this deep gaze to go with it.

"Wut abowt dem?" Basil asks, his voice betraying his innocence.

"They're misaligned," Riku starts in an irritated tone, a disapproving frown on his face, "At first, we thought all our infantry in training were just bad shots. It took us a long time before we found out they had a slight curve and a couple knots in the rifling. We gave you the benefit of the doubt and just assumed it was a manufacturing defect. So when our new guns utilizing a new standard with a different barrel type came in with the exact same problems, we knew it had to be you. Why are you sabotaging our weapons?"

"Ey don't know wut yer talkin' abowt," Basil maintains, "Ey don't run de factor'es."

"We tracked down some of the other shipments from that same factory," Riku continues, "Including many from the same production quotas manufactured within the same week. They were all up to your usual high quality. I find it hard to believe that the 6000 assault rifles and 200 sniper rifles we ordered just so coincidentally happened to have the exact same problems two times in a row."

"Ey don't know wut dem Discord freaks arr up to," Basil retorts, making a backwards waving motion with his hand.

"Please stop pretending we don't know..." Riku says, squinting his eyes just a little, "...Pete."

"...You figured it out, huh?" the man now named Pete says.

"Your accent's slipping," Riku comments in a deadpan manner.

"Wait... _you're_ Pete?!" Kiko blurts out as the name finally sinks in. How can this possibly be Pete? He's some big cat thing; not a human.

"Don't recognize me when I'm all humie, huh?" Pete starts, giving a belly laugh, "That Metadronis lady messed me up but _good_."

"Back on topic," Riku starts in an annoyed tone, "Is this some personal grudge against King Mickey?"

"You _bet_ it is!" Pete bellows as he pounds the table with his clenched fist, his face starting to contort with rage, "That mangy _git_ banished me _twice_! Why should _he_ get good guns from _me_?!"

"Because he pays you a lot of money," Riku sighs, "King Mickey has been more than generous this past year. Even though he knew you'd work the black market, he still invested in you. You're not still with Maleficent, are you?"

"Oh, don't even get me _started_ on her!" Pete snarls, "She gave me _nothing_ for all my work! _Nothing!_"

"Please stop changing the topic," Riku retorts, "King Mickey has forgiven you. It's all in the past now. He is showing his faith by allowing you to supply his military. Surely, you must appreciate that?"

"Well..." Pete says, calming down a little, "...he did pay me ten times what that Dukakis git did. Oh, did I mess up _his_ guns."

"You remember Grandmaster Uina, don't you?" Riku asks, reaching into his jacket.

"Yeah, I do," Pete admits, still sounding agitated, "What about him?"

"He has a new design," Riku starts, pulling out a laminated binder and glancing at a sticky note on top, "...'it is the best sniper rifle ever created. You can sell it for a hundred times its cost and you will still never be short a buyer'."

"_Really_," Pete says in a disbelieving tone, sliding himself off the table with a loud thud.

"'We will give you this design and its exclusive rights free of charge'," Riku continues in a flat voice, "'All we ask is you produce a shipment. We will pay 350 killo... kilograms of gold for 200 rifles up front and an extra 50 once we test them all to our satisfaction. After that, you can sell to anybody else you like at any price. Do you accept?'"

"...sure, why not?" Pete says in a begrudging tone, walking past Riku and snatching the documents as he heads towards a draped wall, "I'll make guns for that runt. But know this! If he tries to play a trick on me, I can still thrash that boat boy king to next Sunday! Come over here, Riku."

"Um... okay," Riku says, hopping up and striding over. Pete tears off the scratchy cloth to reveal this large mannequin of about his size. There are these thick red and blue armor pads covering the major areas, with a metal helmet sporting a single rhino-style horn. Of more interest, however, is the absolutely gigantic weaponry in its hands. In the right hand is a black and blue steel hammer that must be at least as big as Kiko and five times heavier. In the left is this equally massive chaingun with bullets the size of softballs streaming in from a massive backpack. The sort of thing of which you don't want to find yourself at the business end. Pete grabs this nearby camera off a hook and turns to face Kiko.

"Hey, greeny girl!" Pete shouts, tossing the camera at her, "Take a picture, will ya?"

Kiko barely catches the camera from sheer instinct alone. She wants to say something about that choice of words, but why bother? Starting an argument just means staying here longer and it's not like he'll learn anything from it. Pete grabs Riku, turns him around, and pulls him by his outer shoulder in for a side by side pose. There's something almost majestic in his tooth bearing frowny smile. Kiko fumbles a little with the camera before locating the viewfinder and button. Framing the shot with the battle equipment to the left, Kiko takes a picture. Some slip of pliable paper plops out, fluttering a little before sliding onto the ground.

"Tell that pipsqueak I'll think about it," Pete announces, picking up the picture and abruptly swapping it with the camera from Kiko's hands.

"It was nice to see you too, Pete," Riku says as he starts walking out, very lightly tugging Kiko's shoulder as he passes by.

"Sod off," Pete grumbles with irritation as he starts reading the document.

**--**

With that so-called meeting out of the way, it is only proper for Riku to treat for lunch. Get that smell of sweat and grease out of the system. Thankfully, near Pete's stand is this restaurant of vaguely Mediterranean style with all sorts of meats and fried veggies. The sort of place that someone trying to lose weight should avoid, but that doesn't apply to high end soldiers like them. Kiko still isn't used to the menus of this universe, though; she'll just order what Riku is having.

"Hello, and welcome to Pomegranate Phoenicia!" some cheery door girl with tanned skin and light hair greets as Riku and Kiko approach, "Business or leisure section?"

"Leisure," Riku casually declares.

"Right this way!" the door girl jubilantly calls, skipping in under the canopied door. Kiko tries to make a comment, but before she knows it, Riku is already several paces ahead. She follows her idol inside through the well adorned waiting area, the walls covered with banners and plaques. Some simplistic, vaguely stringy music is playing through an intercom system, barely audible over the chatter. They go through the cordoned off walkways through some rooms filled to the brim with people in formal wear. Each table has a monitor tree displaying charts and graphs, with a huge LCD monitor displaying six boxes of scrolling numbers and line graphs. The music in here is some odd techno-style thing that an executive in his or her fifties would consider 'powerful'.

This is not the final destination, though. They exit out into a fenced in outdoor area with simple tables and barely anybody in sight. Just a family of three and some woman tending a nearby bar. The music is back to the stringy stuff from the waiting room, its inoffensiveness almost offensive in its own right. At least it's quiet enough to ignore. The employee indicates some small table as she drops a few menus on the places, Riku and Kiko sitting down on the cushioned steel chairs.

"I'll send a waiter right over!" the cheery girl announces, skipping off back towards the front. Riku practically buries his head in the menu as he reads it over, his face obscured to Kiko.

"Why is that one room so full but this one is so empty?" Kiko asks.

"There are lots more people here for business than leisure," Riku starts without bothering to put the menu down, "Last year, they didn't even have this leisure section. City ordinance now requires 10% capacity or 6 tables minimum for non-business customers. People were complaining about being forced to pay three times as much to sit at a crowded computer cluster and share the room with loud 'alien' businessmen."

"Oh," Kiko says, not sure why it's still so empty. There are eight empty tables here right now; shouldn't a popular festival have long lines for everything? Kind of boggles the mind. Some waitress barely any different from the door girl or bartender comes right up, a plastic PDA of some kind in her hand.

"Welcome to Pomegranate Phoenicia!" the waitress greets, "Can I interest the pretty lady in a drink?"

"Um..." Kiko says, picking up the menu and glancing through it, "...White Dwarf is that yellow sparkly stuff, right?"

"Yep!" the waitress jubilantly confirms with a slight, gleeful hop.

"I'll have that," Kiko orders, unsure of herself.

"And for you, good sir?" the waitress asks.

"I'll have a malt," Riku starts, completely confident in his choice, "Sea Salt. Scrooge brand, if you have it."

"Of course!" the waitress says, tapping some stuff into her device and starting off towards the employee door, "I'll get that right up for you!"

"So..." Kiko pauses, struggling for a topic of conversation, "Why is King Mickey buying weapons from Pete? Didn't he try to take over the universe or something?"

"He's given that up," Riku answers, putting the menu down, "Now that he's settled down, King Mickey wants to get him back on our side."

"But why?" Kiko asks, "Won't he just betray us?"

"Pete is actually very easy to figure out," Riku explains, "All he wants is money, power, and respect. So long as he thinks you can give that to him, he will stay by your side through everything. Even a castle flooding with Heartless won't break his loyalty."

"But didn't Mickey have to banish him for causing so much trouble?" Kiko asks.

"I think Pete's just sore because Mickey used to work for him," Riku starts, "When Mickey became king, I guess he just kind of snapped. I don't know all the details, though, but it looks like he's calmed down since then."

"I guess," Kiko says, unsure of what else to say. She was always under the impression that he turned evil or something, but he didn't seem too bad. Grumpy, sure, but almost sympathetic. Another awkward pause occurs for the next minute or so, only finally broken up by the re-appearance of the waitress with the two drinks.

"Do you need any more time?" the waitress asks, gently placing the drinks down.

"I'm ready," Riku says.

"How about you, pretty lady?" the waitress asks.

"I'll let you decide, Riku," Kiko says, the words making Riku wince ever so slightly. He opens the menu back up and quickly glances over the first page.

"An order of Marakesh Loops for my friend," Riku orders, putting the menu back down, "I'll have the El Fassi Platter, extra wraps. Bring a whole bottle of Tahini sauce, please."

"Just the loops for the pretty lady?" the waitress asks, puzzled.

"Yeah," Riku confirms, holding up the menu.

"I'll whip it right up for you!" the waitress announces, grabbing both menus and skipping off.

"What's up with these people?" Kiko asks.

"Hmm?" Riku says.

"I just noticed all the people working here look the same," Kiko explains, "And that waitress keeps staring at me and calling me 'pretty lady'."

"You don't know about the Pomegranate Gendercide?" Riku asks.

"No," Kiko admits. She has no clue why she should know something like this, but whatever.

"It happened a couple hundred years ago," Riku starts, "Some scientist on Discord IV engineered this virus. It spreads through everything but the vacuum of space, eats every cell with a Y chromosome, and then dies after about a day. He didn't want to test it on his planet for obvious reasons, so he just went to the nearest one with life and fired it off."

"Just like that?" Kiko asks, just a little shocked.

"Yep," Riku answers, "Five billion sentient beings and countless everything else killed in the name of science. The most casual mass murder in recorded history."

"That's terrible," Kiko comments.

"They tried to stay on the planet," Riku continues, "Invented a way to keep making children, but once the other animals all died off, they had to leave. Used everything to create space ships, took off, and found a new planet. They've kept going as an all-female race since then. Does that answer your question?"

"...yeah, it does," Kiko says, taking a second to figure it out. She needs to make a power play after something like that. Unhappy topics are not befitting a date. What to say, what to say... awkward pause starting and nothing comes to mind. What is there to talk about, anyway? School is boring, military life is boring, she doesn't really want to hear about Riku's immediate past...

"Tell me about yourself," Riku finally blurts out.

"Huh?" Kiko mutters, taken a bit off-guard by the question. Before she can even think of a stalling ploy, the divine timing of the service brings in the waitress. Her board has one raised tray and a total of seven plates of food.

"Okay!" the waitress jubilantly declares, taking a plate with these fried loop things off and placing it in front of Kiko, "One order of Marakesh Loops for the pretty lady."

"Thanks," Kiko says, staring at her paltry dish.

"And the El Fassi Platter for the gentleman," the waitress continues, moving the tray and remaining plates over, "Extra wraps and an unopened bottle of Tahini sauce just the way you like it!"

"Thank you," Riku says as the waitress wanders off, cracking open the bottle and pouring a large glob into one of the wraps. Something about this bugs Kiko; why did he get all this stuff for himself and just order what appears to be an appetizer for her? Seems rather unfair.

"Um..." Kiko pauses, thinking on her next words.

"I didn't know what you'd like," Riku starts as he scoops some meat into his wrap, apparently reading her intent, "So I thought I'd just get you the 'safe' thing and the platter for myself. You may have as much of mine as you want."

"Okay..." Kiko says, a little disappointed. While reasonable, surely, he can do better than this.

"Tell me about yourself," Riku asks again, drenching his wrap in some more sauce. No wonder he asked for a whole bottle.

"Well..." Kiko stammers, looking down to her food and nervously flicking a piece around, "...it's not that important."

"I just feel like I don't really know you," Riku explains, leaning in a little to take a sip from his malt.

"I already told you everything that happened up to when I met you," Kiko says, deciding to try one of the loops. Kind of salty and greasy, yet chewy.

"That was all of a day," Riku quips, rolling the wrap into a cylinder, "You were obviously someone before you got sent here."

"I wasn't really anybody..." Kiko sighs, sipping some of her citrus tasting carbonated drink. Riku looks kind of disappointed, taking a quick bite of his brown stained wrap.

"How old are you?" Riku asks.

"Huh?" Kiko says, taken aback by such an obvious question, "Didn't I tell you?"

"No," Riku starts, "You told Sora... sort of, but you didn't tell me."

"Well..." Kiko starts, "I'm fifteen, I think. My birthday was July 22nd, 1993 and it was September 19th, 2008 when I got sent here... I think... I don't really feel 15 any more."

"You don't look it, either," Riku comments, taking another bite, "What sort of day was this 'September 19th, 2008'?"

"It was awful," Kiko says, "I don't think-"

"It was the last day you were..." Riku starts, pausing as something apparently crosses his mind, "...former Kiko. The most important day of your old life. I want to hear all about it."

"But..." Kiko trails off, thinking hard on what to say. These months in the universe have only darkened her view on her old life. Maybe it seemed slightly tolerable when she had no other alternative, but living such an exciting life here while witnessing just how screwed up her old world truly was has made even the thought of describing it sicken her to her stomach. Why should he care, anyway? She's here, her past isn't coming here, she's most certainly not going back there, and she can just mold herself to his expectations. What is there to talk about?

"Come on..." Riku says, annoyed, "I guess I'll be more direct. When you woke up on the morning of 'September 19th, 2008', what did you first do?"

"I took my medication," Kiko sighs, her mood falling with the memories of her former body. Such a frail thing.

"Medication?" Riku asks, now suddenly a lot more interested... or so it seems. Still not more interesting than his soaked wraps, apparently.

"Some type of a-ner-bol-ic steroid," Kiko explains, "Back then, I was so weak. I couldn't even lift my 50 centimeter TV. No matter how much I could force myself to eat, I just couldn't gain any weight."

"...they gave you _steroids_?!" Riku asks, a look of total astonishment on his face, "At _fifteen_? What _quack_ of a doctor did you have?"

"I stole them from my uncle," Kiko corrects, starting to feel ashamed of herself, "He was a big guy. He could bench over 500 pounds and he had steroids to thank for it. I thought maybe if I took them, I could be strong as well."

"Wow," Riku says, shocked and appalled, "That's just... wow... holy crap..."

"I know," Kiko says, holding back her tears, "I was just desperate. I hate being weak. Hate it. So. Much."

"There, there," Riku quickly consoles, his tone more obligatory than natural, "It's okay. You're certainly not weak any more."

"I guess..." Kiko responds, thinking happy thoughts to purge that sadness out. She can't cry. If she cries, she loses. Imagining 'Make It Wit Chu' by her favorite band seems to do the job admirably.

"Anyway," Riku continues after finishing off his wrap, "After you took your stolen steroids, what did you do?"

"I brushed my teeth," Kiko says.

"After that?" Riku asks, pulling out another wrap and pouring some more sauce.

"I took a shower," Kiko continues, hoping to bore him out of the topic. Riku gives off a small sigh as he starts scooping meat into his freshly drenched wrap.

"What's the next interesting thing that happened?" Riku asks as he scoops stuff into his wrap, masking his growing impatience pretty well. So much for the boredom tactic.

"Jamie was waiting for me outside," Kiko continues, "She woke up early to walk me to school. She just said it was because she was being nice, but she asked me at lunch to go to her poetry reading at this coffee club that night."

"Who's Jamie?" Riku asks, pouring some more sauce on his wrap.

"She was my friend," Kiko explains, "I knew her since grade school. We were both in the same special education classes until 8th grade."

"Was she a good friend?" Riku asks, putting his wrap down and grabbing some type of yellowish green vegetable. He starts chewing on it as he stares passively at Kiko.

"I guess..." Kiko says, thinking carefully about her next words, "Our parents kind of forced us together. Always scheduling 'playdates' and crap because I didn't have other friends."

"She sounds like she liked you," Riku comments, "She cared what you thought if she asked you to go to her reading. Anyway, what happened at school?"

"Er..." Kiko pauses, thinking fast on a stall, "...may I have one of those wraps?"

"Help yourself," Riku says, taking an empty plate off of the raised tray and scooping some materials onto it. He slides it in front of Kiko, placing the bottle of sauce in the center of the table. Some sort of direction would be nice, but she'll just save that diversion for later.

"Thank you," Kiko says, picking up her fork and prodding at the brown meat a little. She seems to have bought some time, so all she has to do is figure out how to keep him away from that topic. Before she can think of anything concrete, he finishes his wrap and starts up again.

"What happened at school?" Riku asks once again, picking up this bread roll type thing and pouring sauce all over.

"How do I-" Kiko attempts.

"Scoop meat and whatever else you want into the wrap, roll, and eat," Riku explains, unfazed, "What happened at school on the day of 'September 19th, 2008'?"

"It was my fourth period history class," Kiko explains reluctantly, "I wasn't paying attention and was writing down a story."

"What sort of story?" Riku asks. Kiko starts sweating as she realizes just how undone she is. She was hoping he wouldn't ask that question, but if she mentions her old stories the way they were, both her respectability and her cover story are shot to hell. Riku would have every right to completely forsake her if he found out she was using him as a pawn in her self-gratification fiction. Against all her wishes, she's going to have to lie.

"It was..." Kiko starts, tripping over herself as she realizes the flaw in an intended path, "...a story about me and... Solid Snake as we went... shopping for clothing."

"...really..." Riku comments dryly, "Sorry, sorry. Continue."

"That wasn't all it had," Kiko continues, realizing just how major a plot hole her story would have without the glossed over element, "It also, er... um..."

"Yes?" Riku prods.

"Had-a-sex-scene," Kiko blurts out all at once, her voice barely traveling through the air. Too bad Riku apparently has really good hearing. After another uncomfortable pause, he gives a calm sigh.

"That's perfectly okay," Riku says in a totally sincere manner, picking up his malt and taking a sip.

"...wait, what?" Kiko says, shocked.

"You were a fifteen year old girl near the end of puberty," Riku says, "It's a lot better you got those feelings out in your writing than by sleeping around... you weren't-"

"No," Kiko interrupts, kind of insulted by Riku's doubt in her so-called purity, "I'm still a virgin."

"...well, anyway," Riku says after thoughtful pause, "I think I can guess what happened, but I'd like to hear it from you."

"My teacher took it, made some remarks, and threatened to read it aloud if I didn't start paying attention," Kiko quickly says, getting it out of her system. That should shut him up.

"That wasn't what I was thinking," Riku admits, a puzzled look on his face, "I thought some other student stole it from you, but damn. A teacher did that?"

"Yes," Kiko sighs.

"Well, that's..." Riku starts, looking kind of uncomfortable, "...kind of crappy. Did the other students pick on you after that?"

"Yes," Kiko responds, "Mr. Selacia didn't even say much of anything, but everybody kind of made their own assumptions. The usual gossip exaggeration."

"Mister Selacia..." Riku says, giving a thoughtful look.

"What about him?" Kiko asks, unsure of how Riku could ever know who he is.

"Mister," Riku says very deliberately, "Last name. What's your last name?"

"Huh?" Kiko asks, the scope of the question hitting her immediately after.

"You never gave a last name," Riku starts, "We always thought you just came from a culture just like the Destiny Islands. Small towns, everybody knows everyone else. If two people end up with the same name, then we just say 'Karthas, son of Longus' or 'Paimi, daughter of Quima'. However, with this so-called Mister Selacia, you just told me your culture uses last names. What is your last name?"

"...I don't have a last name," Kiko starts, her creative sectors working in overdrive, "My family is from out of town. We moved there when I was young."

"Immigration didn't give you a last name?" Riku asks, dealing the decisive blow to Kiko's cover story. It's over now... or is it?

"...Fluffypants," Kiko says.

"Fluffypants?" Riku asks, squinting his right eye in confusion.

"The person at immigration was a dick," Kiko explains, now confident in her new path, "He saw my dad wearing cotton pants and decided to name us after them."

"That's... um... wow..." Riku starts, "No wonder the other kids made fun of you."

"Yeah," Kiko says, doing her best to mask her satisfaction, "I got beat up all the time and couldn't defend myself."

"So, um..." Riku says, apparently a bit bored now, "What happened immediately before you got sent here?"

"Heartless attacked, appeared to destroy my world, and I got sucked into the storm," Kiko explains, thinking about a new topic of conversation to follow. She really can't let these sorts of topics overtake this date. Maybe she should talk about music or something? But there are no Queens of the Stone Age here. No AFI, no Foo Fighters, no Beck, no Coldplay... is Riku not going to say anything? He's just sitting there eating some grey brittle thing.

"My bad," Riku says, putting down the unidentified food, "I was expecting you to say more."

"What more is-" Kiko attempts.

"You were processed through the celestial system," Riku interrupts, "People don't just fall in for no reason. They get chosen because they have some great role to play or some crap. In over four months, we cannot figure out what that is. Yen Sid said he never even heard of you and he's usually able to predict new arrivals months in advance. Your performance is actually below the average in King Mickey's regular army."

"...somebody attacked me that night," Kiko continues, doing her best to quell her rampant emotions, "I was walking home from the coffee club in town. I think I was around Laurel Avenue when it happened."

"Laurel Avenue doesn't mean anything to me," Riku comments.

"It's where some shops are," Kiko explains, "I was between two stores when someone tackled me into the alley. I thought I was going to be raped, but he just stared at me for a while. Then he said 'my god, what have I become?' or something before running away."

"What can you tell me about him?" Riku asks.

"...I don't know," Kiko admits. Unfortunate but true, for a change.

"What do you mean?" Riku presses.

"It was dark," Kiko explains, "I couldn't really see anything."

"But you identified him as male," Riku starts, "Surely, you must have seen something. How tall was he?"

"I don't know," Kiko answers, "He knocked me to the ground."

"What sort of frame did he have?" Riku asks.

"I don't know," Kiko says, "I was dizzy and scared. By the time I could see, he ran away."

"...what sort of voice did he have?" Riku asks, now sounding very frustrated.

"What do you mean?" Kiko asks.

"Was it deep?" Riku asks, lowering his pitch to match, "Was it high? Thick? Did he have an accent?"

"...I don't know," Kiko admits, "It didn't really sound like anything. Just a voice."

"So you were attacked by someone," Riku summarizes, "You couldn't make out any features, don't know how tall or how big they were, and their voice didn't sound like anything distinct. Tell me: how do you even know it was male?"

"What woman would ever attack a teenage girl in the middle of the night?" Kiko asks, a bit confused by Riku's implication.

"I didn't say it was a woman," Riku starts, a bit annoyed, "I just don't think you should presume that it's male. Do you even know if it was human?"

"...I guess I don't," Kiko answers, now just wanting a different topic of conversation. She doesn't want to be this completely useless to Riku, after all. Perhaps it's by the good grace of some type of deity that brings the waitress back at this opportune moment.

"Did you enjoy your meal?" asks the waitress, her hands clasped in front.

"Of course," Riku says, giving a polite smile, "It more than lives up to its reputation."

"Why, thank you!" the waitress jubilantly responds as she does a slight hop, "Would you like some dessert? Coffee?"

"I'm okay," Riku says, "Thanks."

"How about you, pretty lady?" the waitress asks as she turns to face.

"I don't know..." Kiko says, thinking about whether she should get dessert. The menu was mostly indecipherable to her and there's also the fact that this cuisine is kind of a departure from her usual fare. Then she realizes something: if she doesn't order anything, they'll probably leave this restaurant and go on to do something that's actually enjoyable. She can distract Riku away from prying at her unfortunate past and hopefully find some activity in the vast cultural canvas they can share.

"I recommend the kulfi," the waitress says, a wide smile on her face.

"I'm okay," Kiko says, doing her best fake smile in return.

"Need some boxes for the platter?" the waitress asks, turning to face Riku.

"That's okay," Riku responds, "Just pass it along to the staff."

"Thank you!" the waitress exclaims, even more excited, "I'll be right back with your check!"

As the waitress skips merrily off towards the employee entrance, Riku leans back a little and drinks his malt deeply. It's only now that Kiko realizes she never got around to actually eating any of the stuff Riku passed over. Since the alternative is to continue that discussion, she scoops a bunch of meat into a wrap and takes a bite. Kind of salty and very dense, but it's not bad. She wouldn't come here on her own, but if Riku likes this place so much, she won't object. Maybe she can earn some bonus points if she can learn how to make this same sort of cuisine? Not that she really wants to be some stereotypical cooking and cleaning girlfriend, but if it makes Riku happy, it shall make her happy in turn. The waitress comes back with a small vinyl folder with the restaurant logo embossed on the front.

"How are we paying today?" the waitress asks, pulling out a pen from her waist smock.

"Expense account," Riku answers, pulling out a card, "Just write 'food' as the reason."

"Certainly, sir!" the waitress says, taking the card, "I'll be right back!"

"You have an expense account?" Kiko asks as the waitress wanders off, not entirely surprised but in need of a conversation topic.

"Of course," Riku answers, "I am working for King Mickey, after all. He gives everybody generous expense accounts."

"Oh," Kiko fakes. The waitress certainly didn't waste any time, arriving with the card and a form of some kind.

"Thank you for choosing Pomegranate Phoenicia!" the waitress exclaims, "Have a nice day!"

**--**

With that meal finished, Kiko and Riku decide to take a tour of the festival. It still bothers her that the apparent definition of 'festival' is 'place to sell stuff', but at least there are some recreational stands. This one section even seems zoned specifically for that purpose, with obviously rigged carnival games costing 2 munny an attempt. They've already tried a couple of these, with nothing but a courtesy keychain doll to show for it. One would think Riku's awesome keyblade powers would allow him to toss a ball into a milk bottle, but whatever. As they walk out to find something less frustrating, one particular game seems to stand out.

"Come one, come all!" shouts the seedy looking operator of some type of rifle game, "2 munny buys 25 shots! Punch out the star and win a prize!"

"I think you should try this one," Riku offers, motioning over to the stand.

"I don't know," Kiko says, not really feeling up for it. It would be so easy to rig something like this. Hell, with the average person being a terrible shot, it's almost unnecessary.

"Come on," Riku says, "Rifles are your specialty, right?"

"I guess..." Kiko reluctantly says, walking alongside Riku as they approach the stand.

"Hey, I know you!" the man says, pointing at Riku, "You're _Sora's_ friend, aren't you?"

"I guess you could say that..." Riku says, sounding a little uncomfortable from the sudden attention of the nearby people.

"Have a round on the house," the man says, picking up a rifle and offering it over to Riku.

"Actually," Riku says, motioning to Kiko, "It's for her."

"Ohhhh," the man says, offering the rifle to Kiko, "Have a round on the house, lady friend of Sora's friend."

"Um... okay," Kiko says, accepting the cheaply made plastic rifle. Without much choice in the matter, Kiko eyes the piece of paper seated five meters down the lane. Judging by the tiny barrel of the gun, it probably shoots BBs of some kind. With twenty five rounds, that only gives her five shots per point. With the top point scoped out, Kiko fires a shot. Seems the sight is slanted slightly higher, but nothing too hard to overcome. She continues, putting two BBs per line with one at each outward convergence point. Start with the top side so gravity will help bring it down and try to space the holes just barely apart. Through some miracle, the paper star actually falls entirely out of the frame. The man tending the game gives a look of total shock for a second before going back to his self-satisfied grin.

"It seems we have an Annie Oakley here with us today!" the man calls out to the small crowd of a dozen people, "Here, keep the rifle. It deserves a fine marksman such as yourself."

"Um... thanks, I guess," Kiko says, looking at the cheap thing in her arms. Certainly a far cry from the Barrett M82A3 that accompanied her to this world, but it's the thought that counts, after all. His other prizes are just ugly cowboy dolls and plastic prop guns, anyway. Riku slightly tugs her as he starts walking away, the stare of the people apparently making him uncomfortable. Kiko follows behind as they leave the scene, emerging in some type of commodities market. Buckets of screws and other loose change.

"Why don't you act like your true self?" Riku asks, completely out of the blue.

"What?" Kiko asks, taken aback by the question.

"I've known you for over four months," Riku starts, "You're usually kind of boyish, to be honest. You wear clothes for comfort and durability rather than appearance even with the lack of a dress code. You talk about video games that seem designed for boys, with male main characters fighting the forces of evil. You specialize in guns and killing specific targets instead of tactical or medical support and never seem to turn your fights personal. To that end, your weapon of choice is not something graceful like a fencing degen or sorcery, but bulky knives and cast iron guns. You were even trying to get strong enough to use an even bigger gun."

"I didn't-" Kiko attempts.

"And yet," Riku continues, "You completely change when you're around me. You change your clothes just for dinner the times you come to my table. You never talk about video games around me and sidestep the topic of your training. In fact, you act almost submissive. Why?"

"I don't know," Kiko says, at a lost for words, "I just... I don't know."

"Do I make you feel uncomfortable?" Riku asks, totally sincere.

"...I don't know," Kiko says, unable to think of a proper response. She never really thought about it that way, but there might be some truth in it. She does want him to like her, after all. However, it's perfectly understandable that she would act differently around him. She wants him to be her boyfriend, after all, and that's only going to happen if she proves herself a worthy girlfriend. He is Riku after all; he can get any girl he wants... which doesn't explain why the only ones he ever seems to interact with on a regular basis are Kairi and Chou. Seems unlikely he'd seek romance from either his childhood friend or the pink alien and there is the fact that he asked Kiko out pretty specifically. Regardless, the fact that he showed interest in her through her modified actions must mean they're working.

"I just think you should be your true self," Riku continues, "Don't try to hide or change your hobbies and interests just because of me or anyone else. That will only make you unhappy. Anyone who can't accept you for who you are is not someone you want to be around."

"...how did you get your keyblade?" Kiko asks, just wanting to get out of this doomed conversation. Riku starts to say something, but stops as he apparently thinks something over. After a little, he recollects himself.

"When Maleficent recruited me," Riku starts, "I was just a 'mediocre sorcerer', as Maleficent put it. Still am, actually. She had this other apprentice, some girl that couldn't have been any older than 12. So damaged, so aggressive, so spiteful. We were kept separate for a few weeks, neither knowing of the other. Then Maleficent told her that she was grooming me to be a replacement because she didn't have any faith in her ability to kill when needed. This apprentice, feeling betrayed by her mentor, tracked me down and accused me of 'stealing Maleficent's love'. I attempted to reason with her, but she wouldn't listen and tried to kill me."

"But she didn't," Kiko comments, suggesting the unfortunate outcome that must have resulted. While she still doesn't want to hear this story, she can't stop him again. Besides, if she has to tell him about her less than pleasant memories, she should let him do the same. Let it be a cathartic moment for both of them. She'll just keep playing that song in her head in the mean time. 'Sometimes the same is different, but mostly, it's the same...'

"She almost did," Riku continues, "Maleficent had taken my normal sword for some crap reason a few hours before. Said it 'wasn't becoming of a proper magician'. Considering the timing, it was obviously to stack the deck in the girl's favor. All I had were a couple protection spells and a weak darkness blast. It was no contest compared to her total mastery of darkness and the elements. Just when she had broken my defenses, summoned a banishing portal into the Realm of Darkness, and was about to throw me to the whims of Darkside itself, I had a vision. A single heavenly voice, light and soft but warped with an undertone of chaos called out to me as I stood on this barren plain under a black sky. It told me 'don't be afraid' as this dark purple light started flooding into me from all directions. With a bright flash, I found myself back in reality..."

"...what happened?" Kiko asks after Riku's uncomfortable pause.

"I was standing there holding a red crystal shard," Riku starts with a strained voice, holding back a shudder, "I had this girl impaled through her chest and pinned against the wall. If there was a struggle, it had long past during my vision. I can still see her face, a final look of regretful innocence so unlike her seething rage only moments ago. Only when the full extent of the horror started to dawn on me did Maleficent show up. 'Why did she attack me?', I asked. 'Survival of the fittest', she answered."

"...and you still stayed with her?" Kiko asks, not so much surprised at Maleficent's actions at the fact that anybody would trust her after a stunt like that.

"Believe me, I didn't want to," Riku explains, a look of regret on his face, "But she talked me into it. She told me she arranged this fight for 'the best of all possible worlds', that she was always watching in case one of us went too far. Considering the girl wasn't stopped from summoning a portal into the Heart of Darkness itself, she obviously had no desire to prevent either of our deaths. Most importantly, however, she convinced me it was my fault. Said it was my lack of control that ended with the death of her 'beloved apprentice'. She told me that she had every reason to kick me out and make sure I never leave Hollow Bastion, but if I 'repent for my sin', she'd keep me. So I stayed, she trained me to forge my keyblade shard into a proper sword, and in turn, I did her dirty work."

"...wow..." Kiko mutters, unsure of how Riku can be so dumb. How could anyone fall for something that evil? It just boggles the mind. There had to be some mind control involved. Riku is too smart for something like this. Sure, she knew Maleficent somehow tricked Riku into joining her, but to just be so thoroughly and unrepentently evil while keeping his trust is beyond belief. If Kiko remembers correctly, Maleficent even called herself the 'mistress of all evil' right in front of Riku...

"Now that you know my story," Riku starts, "Tell me: is your life so bad?"

"What?" Kiko asks, confused by this question. He wouldn't possibly dare...

"You sound like you were just some normal girl," Riku outlines, "Maybe you were a little weak and got bullied a bit more than is healthy, but you had at least one good friend and a family that kept you sheltered with expensive video games to play. They didn't even search your room while you're away, since I don't think any responsible parent would allow steroids. Your so called 'worst day of your life' would have blown over after a month at the most. Even the so-called 'Heartless' attack wasn't anything bad. You didn't have to watch any friends get consumed by the darkness."

"After maybe a couple bruises and a lot of fear," Riku continues, "You got sent here through a system reserved for only the greatest heroes and most terrifying villains. You aren't even close to the importance of other celestial transfers like Grandmaster Uina, General Trevor Mithas, Simon Le Bon, or Master Williams, but here you are. Without working for it, you got the perfect body for the purpose of infiltration and assassination without a single magical tie. Your precognition might even make you more powerful than Sora and me if you learn to harness it. You spent less than a day on the streets before getting backdoored into a cozy military school that has done everything to accommodate you."

"...I..." Kiko breathes, unable to come up with a response. Nothing good can come from this.

"I didn't even describe the worst thing that has happened to me," Riku starts in a truly dire tone, looking deep into Kiko's eyes, "I have seen horrors beyond your imagination and committed ones that make those pale in comparison. I watched as the Heartless destroyed worlds and consumed people by the thousand. I watched as Maleficent inducted monsters that make Cenari seem rational by comparison into her coalition. I watched helplessly as Xehanort controlled my body and attempted to kill my childhood friend. As this puppeteer sent me smashing against Sora's weakening resolve, I got the smallest window of control to banish myself into the darkness. That was only the start of the nightmare that was my so-called adventure. Tell me: is your life so bad?"

Kiko makes a small whimper as she tries to think of something to say, but there really isn't any point at this stage. Date's ruined. All she can hope is to end it with dignity. No tears. If she cries, she has forever tainted this relationship. Nobody wants some overly emotional, weepy girl. They bring nothing but problems and Riku is more than smart enough to realize that.

From out of nowhere, the sound of a music box melody rings out. Some haunting tune, slow and deliberate. Seems almost poignant after Riku's diatribe on what true horror feels like. After a couple seconds, Riku reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out a cell phone. His face goes back to neutral as he presses a button and holds it up to his ear.

"Hello," Riku says in his usual voice, turning a little away from Kiko, "...yes...I think he accepted, but I don't know...he wasn't too happy about it, but he seemed...I didn't have to go above the first offer...he also wanted me to remind you that he can 'thrash you to next Sunday', with a picture to go...no, I don't think he will...I'm just at the festival with Kiko...now? But...fine...see you back at the castle."

Kiko continues to just stand there as she contemplates what Riku told her. This is so far from the Riku of her imagination, it's scary. She always thought that perhaps he was tossed about and used like a blunt tool, but nothing ever broke his magnificent spirit. Now, he talks about these events with a level of guilt suggesting he went along willingly. Why feel so guilty about being possessed? It was not his own actions, but those of somebody else. Riku eventually puts away his cell phone and faces Kiko more directly.

"King Mickey called," Riku starts in a vaguely annoyed tone, "He needs me for something. I don't know what. Shall we walk back to the castle?"

Kiko just continues to stare as she tries to rationalize his actions. He knows this is a date; why did he decide to rain on it like this? Dates are for happy things, not angsty brooding about horror and darkness. That's only for when there's actually something relevant such as an upcoming mission. After a little, Riku reaches out and lightly grabs her hand.

"I just want you to be happy," Riku says, awkwardly holding her hand close to him, "Your one day of darkness has passed. The school will see to it that another will not transpire. Will you cheer up... for me?"

"...sure..." Kiko eventually breathes out, her emotions too wracked to truly appreciate his gesture.

"Let's walk back home, now," Riku says, gently leading her by the hand towards the castle. Kiko, unable or unwilling to comprehend what Riku just told her, just silently follows as she thinks back on this date. She always imagined her first date would be something magical, something legendary. A true testament to the unbreakable bond forged between them. Instead, what she got was a whole lot of emotional baggage. If anything, this was a giant step backwards in her hopeful relationship with her beloved hero. She barely even pays any mind to where they're going, allowing him to lead her through the castle corridors and into the spiral atrium. Riku stops by the hallway to the elevator, turning to face Kiko again.

"It was nice seeing you," Riku starts, "If I'm able, I'll find you at dinner tonight. Just relax, think about your life, and be happy."

"...okay..." Kiko murmurs weakly.

"Have a nice day," Riku says, finally releasing her hand and walking off towards some unmarked door. Kiko wanders through the hallway, up the elevator, and back to her room without a coherent train of thought. Now that she's in the privacy of her room away from the prying eyes of Riku or anyone that might tell him, she does the only thing that seems natural after an event like this: she walks into her bedroom, tosses aside the cheap toy gun, falls face first onto her bed, and weeps.


	56. Fuchsia, Cerise, Lavender, and Magenta

Of all the offices in the world, none are as fine as King Mickey's. Set on the twelfth floor of Ansem's old castle in an obscure tower, it manages to get a perfect view of Radiant Garden while staying in the shade all day long. The yuppie revolution might demand bigger and shinier offices, but King Mickey decided to go for something a bit smaller. With ten meters door to window and eight meters wall to wall, it's just large enough to carry a full mainframe supercomputer on one wall and a holographic tactical counter in the center. The rest of the space is divided between two plush chairs perpendicular to a coffee table, a tiny desk connected to a filing cabinet, and a refrigerator, with walkways barely a meter wide. An office fit for the modern, modest king.

Today, Mickey has quite the work load. The Heartless have been mobilized the past two months, attacking worlds at random without any visible leadership. The only possible evidence of any direction is the small radar blip at the edge of the system that accompanies every Heartless defeat, but with no pattern to its placement or timing, they can only guess what it means. Is it a beacon? A control ship? A glitch in the system? Nobody knows.

The first world was a fairly easy in and out affair, but each new world has brought tougher and smarter enemies already adept at the appropriate counter-strategies. Orbital bombardment is countered with space-borne Heartless, armor units are torn apart by giant bird-like creatures, and red giants at the front lines deflect gunfire effortlessly. The second world broke a sweat, the third world was a struggle, and the fourth has turned to desperate trench warfare. With only a 5% stake left, all orbital support destroyed or corrupted, and Heartless closing in on all sides, things have turned grim. For the first time in nearly a year, the deployed army has called their commander-in-chief directly.

"This is King Mickey," the regal mouse says towards a camera affixed to the giant monitor of the main frame, "Who is speaking?"

"This is Commander Eades of the 114th company," says some officer visible on the monitor after a twenty second delay.

"Ah, Commander Eades," Mickey starts, "Where is General Mithas?"

"He's rotating his bodyguards right now," Eades answers after another twenty seconds, "I'm in command for the time being."

"Still paranoid as always, huh?" Mickey responds, "Can't blame him. What's the status report?"

"We're still cut off from our supply lines," Eades continues after yet another twenty seconds, "We're down to our last thousand gallons of fuel, eighty G3 tanks, twelve LP-80 howitzers, and barely any ammunition or explosives. We lost four more cities within the past twenty four hours and are about to lose a fifth within the hour. We can't hold out much longer. We need a hero."

"And heroes you shall receive," Mickey answers, "When the blockade became official 36 hours ago, I prepared our finest heroes. Sora, Grandmaster Uina, and the Tourmaline Shamaness are en route, with the _Falcon_ and the _Four Winds_ as their vessels. They should be in the system within a couple hours."

"Really?" Eades says, delayed, in a small bit of disbelief, "Thank you so much, sir."

"Here's what I suggest you do," Mickey starts, walking over to his holographic table and queuing up the map to some mountainous region, "Announce to your men the coming of the heroes. Use one of the broken encryption methods and transmit by radio just enough to reach the whole world; we want to see if the Heartless controller is on the planet. Once you broadcast that, switch back to a secure method for the next parts. Do you still have the victory crates?"

"Yes," Eades responds, a little confused. Mickey uses the delay to draw some troop movement lines with a stylus.

"Throw an hour long party for the rear line," Mickey explains, "Maybe it's a bit disingenuous to have the victory party while we're losing, but everybody will be off the planet within 48 hours regardless of the outcome. Have the front line start withdrawing inwards towards the designated mountain range starting with the lowest threat cities. Figure out which twenty tanks are most likely to break down and leave them behind on auto where they're most likely to suppress the Heartless. Use convoy formations and towing lines to get the other sixty tanks and twelve howitzers to the base of the mountain range as marked. They should all be there around the time when the first party ends."

"Rotate the front and back line," Mickey continues, drawing a couple circles with arrows, "Drop another twenty tanks on auto and start fortifying the mountain range. Have the rear line move the civilians into the marked mines and seal off any connections with the underground rivers. If you feel inclined, arm some of the civilians and put them on guard. When everybody from the rear line is present, throw an hour long party for them. We want morale riding high if this is going to work. Any questions so far?"

"Not yet," Eades responds, delayed.

"I'll leave the fortification of the mountains up to you," Mickey continues, "Use the explosives to flatten a summit within walking distance from the mines. It needs to support two standard mass evacuation troop transports. Have your cartographers find the location of as many ore veins containing copper and zinc as possible and compile the data in U-DOS format. Be ready to evacuate the planet under heavy fire at a moment's notice. Do you understand these orders?"

"Yes, sir," Eades says with a salute, delayed.

"The Grandmaster will be your evacuation control," Mickey says, switching off the holographic display and walking towards the mainframe, "Good luck and godspeed."

With that, Mickey shuts down the mainframe with a couple key strokes. Just another day in the life as the vague ruler of some type of interplanetary government. Mickey casually flips a couple switches, the holograph table descending into the floor and the computer regressing into the wall. With his equipment out of the way, he walks over to the door and opens it to reveal Riku wearing his usual compliment of military duds.

"Thank you for waiting," Mickey says, motioning towards the miniature lounge.

"No problem," Riku answers, walking inside, "What's going on, anyway? Sora mentioned something about an invasion the other day, but he was kind of vague."

"The Heartless attacked a fourth planet," Mickey explains, walking over to the fridge, "Malleus V. Some backwater with only about 70,000 colonists and no major resources. No strategic value whatsoever. They came in through the Corridors of Darkness and attacked a single outpost, waited until a distress call was issued before finishing the job, and then dug in. They didn't fully mobilize until after the fleet arrived and we had all our ground troops on the surface. After that, they then sent some new type of Heartless to take out orbital support and set up a blockade while exterminating our ground forces with extreme prejudice."

"Sounds pretty nasty," Riku says, falling back into one of the big comfy chairs. Mickey grabs a sea salt ice cream bar and walks over to the table.

"I'm concerned," Mickey says in a discouraged tone, handing Riku the frozen treat as he sits down, "The last three attacks were also obvious provocations and each time, they came up with a new counter-strategy. Destroy them with cruise missiles and they develop a suicide flier that stops them before they even reach the front line. Destroy them with tanks and they just create a massive flier that tears them apart. Shooting those down with artillery just increased the number of suicide fliers and made them fast enough to stop even short range shells. You can barely even see the sky when the Heartless are around. Their front lines are these red giants with huge clubs that block most gunfire as they close in to melee. The usual swarm of Shadows and Soldiers clean up once they break through and scatter the troops."

"Sounds very professional," Riku comments, eating away at his light blue frozen treat. It's the simple things in life.

"I don't think it's Maleficent," Mickey continues, "She uses the Heartless as a blunt tool to divert and deter from her real plans. To that end, she gathers easily manipulated, disposable henchmen and rival warlords to do all her dirty work. She's never treated us as anything more than an obstacle and her goals always seem to revolve around obscure arcana and legendary artifacts. Whoever is controlling the Heartless has gone through all this trouble to dissect our tactics and mold new Heartless to counter. The chaotic creatures act with an order and discipline unseen in anything but the finest elite military units. They flank, ambush, isolate, siege, hold, fortify, and demoralize with the best of them. It's rather frightening, really."

"I can imagine," Riku comments, finishing off his carb-filled snack and tossing the stick into a nearby waste bin.

"These new Heartless are real beasts as well," Mickey explains, "All their leaders so far have been modeled after Behemoths, heavily armored and much better at summoning meteors. They're an army in their own right, but whoever is leading them is smart enough to keep them safe. As such, I've cataloged them as Heavy Behemoths. The suicide fliers shall be known as Interceptors, the anti-vehicle giant birds as Rocs, the club wielding giants as Oni, and the new space Heartless as Dominators. I'll write up formal entries to include in the official bestiary for all after this conflict, but you deserve to know about them ahead of time. But enough of that; how are your wards doing?"

"They're okay, I guess," Riku answers, "Nothing that big has happened the past month."

"Danielle doing okay after that surgery?" Mickey asks, rising up towards the fridge.

"I guess," Riku answers, "She's still feeling kind of sad about Greg's disappearance."

"Still?" Mickey asks, opening the fridge and rummaging through the bottles within, "It's been almost three months now. Shouldn't he have found his way back by now?"

"I would think so, but I don't know," Riku answers as he reclines a bit, "She's still a great sorceress with the best wind control I've personally seen short of the late Xaldin, but she's stopped really trying. I'm worried she has lost her focus. How's the search going?"

"There isn't much more I can do," Mickey answers, heading back with a couple bottles in tow, "I have already set a bulletin on Amaterasu, Radiant Garden, and the fleet. Without any leads, we just have to play the waiting game. How is Christopher Jones of Brighton?"

"He seems happy with the Highwind model," Riku answers, cracking open one of the bottles of White Dwarf, "No significant change, otherwise."

"How about Ksenya?" Mickey asks.

"No significant change," Riku answers.

"Ahmed?" Mickey asks.

"No significant change," Riku answers.

"Deirdre?" Mickey asks.

"No significant change," Riku answers, starting to stare off into space. He's obviously used to this sort of thing by now.

"The Frederickson brothers?" Mickey asks, also going into a sort of automated mode.

"No significant change," Riku answers robotically.

"Her Holiness, the High Princess Staümprem Mòrag Fiona Senga Eamag Tòmag VII, Esquire?" Mickey says while maintaining a completely straight face.

"I call her Stompy," Riku answers with a sigh, "No significant change."

"How about Lassjaksta?" Mickey asks.

"No significant change," Riku answers.

"Undossda? Gam Rye? Prior Paolini?" Mickey asks.

"No significant change," Riku answers.

"I guess that just leaves two people," Mickey says, leaning a little into his chair, "Anything new about them?"

"Not really," Riku answers.

"Not even a little?" Mickey prods.

"I guess Kiko is a little less creepy and Chou hasn't had a panic attack in a long time," Riku answers, "Did you have something you wanted to talk about?"

"As an impartial headmaster, I can't hold favorites," Mickey starts, "But in my normative opinion through comparative analysis of everybody's progress, capabilities, and attitude, I have to say that Chou Perltranicjavplusforbas is the most promising new recruit we have and if you and Sora weren't in the student body, possibly also the best student."

"I'm impressed you remember her full name," Riku admits, now more intrigued by this course of discussion, "But why Chou?"

"I promised I'd know everybody like an old friend," Mickey responds in a matter of fact tone, "Yes, Chou has problems. She's physically weak, she's socially awkward, she's very expensive with both her specialized diet and that class I had to set up just for her, but she has two things going for her: work ethic and dedication to her role. Maybe she wasn't born as a worker or soldier, but she has molded herself to both roles admirably."

"I don't think an inspirational success story means that much in the long run," Riku starts, "We have better medics. Stompy can supposedly revive people within a day so long as their Heartless is destroyed."

"I wouldn't put much faith in that," Mickey interjects.

"I don't even get why you keep her in that defensive magic class," Riku continues, "We figured out there's nothing magical about what she does no matter how it appears."

"She needs schedule padding and it isn't hurting her to learn the theory," Mickey answers, "I think about twenty students are misplaced, but school is as much about learning what you don't need so you can figure out what you do."

"You already mentioned the other points," Riku continues, "I just don't know what you're hoping to prove."

"I have a vision," Mickey starts, "Imagine a Feylinus prince or princess in every battalion. Through their mitochondria-stimulation abilities, they remove the need for many medical supplies. No more anesthetics, no more pain killers, no more antibiotics. Don't really need anything but gauze, stitches, and bandages. Morale no longer becomes an issue; a Feylinus can soothe and alleviate fear and doubt directly at the source. In fact, once the battalion becomes accustomed to their Feylinus den mother, they might even start idolizing her and inspire themselves to fight harder to protect her safety and well-being."

"Just that alone would make them one of the most valuable assets to the army," Mickey continues after a brief pause, "But it goes further. Their naturally occurring empathic and telepathic abilities mean they can sense such influence within the troops and root out its source. No more morale undermining through psychic powers. Finally, they can boost the speed, focus, and coordination of people for hours at a time. Imagine using it on snipers, scouts, commandos, you name it. We got to see that in action back on Viesca III. And they do all this without a single magical tie. Simply put, a Feylinus makes everybody a better soldier."

"But Chou is our only Feylinus," Riku interjects, "And she talks so much about how her species hates outsiders and prizes purity within their castes. She was banished for some reason she won't talk about, after all."

"Where we can find one, we can find others," Mickey states, "But anyway, I find an interesting dynamic in one of Chou's more peculiar aspects. She, as the best new recruit, has developed something of a fondness for our worst recruit. It's funny how things work out that way."

"Is that why we keep Kiko?" Riku asks, a little surprised at the implication.

"I wouldn't put it so black and white," Mickey starts, "But yes, that is a pretty good reason in and of itself. I also keep her because she's a celestial transfer. Sure, Yen Sid still doesn't know anything about her, but she's definitely been changed and molded to some ideal. Too bad her skills are actually declining as time goes on. She wouldn't pass muster in the regular military. The fact that she sought us out with information she shouldn't have is pretty interesting as well, but half of that was wrong. Not that I think any seer but Yen Sid has ever been reliable. She's an interesting case, to be certain."

"What do you want to do about her?" Riku asks. He seems to be getting a little uneasy in his chair, as soft as it may be.

"I'm not sure," Mickey starts, "She knows too much for us to set loose. It used to be fortuitous that she ruffled the feathers of the local police department, but we can't send her to them. They have a statute of limitations and we used diplomatic measures to get her off the hook both times. She really doesn't need to know that, though; if we need to get her to do something, it's as good a motivator as any. I don't know... what do you think we should do?"

"How much is it costing us to keep her?" Riku asks. Mickey just sits in his seat, thinking pretty hard on this topic. It's certainly not something to answer lightly, after all.

"Do you know much about economics?" Mickey asks.

"Can't say that I do," Riku answers, apparently sensing a boring lecture coming up.

"There are three types of cost," Mickey explains, "Fixed cost are things that will be the same no matter how many or how few people we train. This castle costs about 350 million munny a year. Taxes on the full 42 square kilometers of land, electricity, water, security, licensing, etc. We also have to pay for all the negative externalities we cause such as pollution from our starships and the public unease of having a foreign military force stationed right at the town's doorstop. Speaking of which, it's not exactly cheap to have what is essentially a giant embassy under our governance. Radiant Garden police aren't even allowed on the premises without permission; I had to spend about 30 million munny in campaign donations just for that privilege alone."

"Damn," Riku comments, "And I thought I was rich with 180,000 munny."

"Other fixed costs probably include the teaching staff," Mickey continues, "They're on fixed salaries with the same benefits and expense accounts whether they teach one student or a thousand. That's about 45 million munny a year. Other things like non-scalar supplies are probably around 10 million a year. Nothing special. That's 405 million munny that we spend regardless of whether or not Kiko attends, so it doesn't count."

"Makes sense," Riku comments.

"Second are variable costs," Mickey continues, "Things that do scale with students. The food they eat, the sheets that have to be washed, the petty cash we give them. Everybody here is on infinite scholarship; we spend as much as it takes to get them through their training. This is also an unpredictable cost; some students may cause more damage, eat less, or require more special aid than other students. I would say each student besides Chou costs about 40,000 munny a year, give or take five thousand. I don't include Chou because she costs about 950,000 munny. It's not cheap to staff an expedition just to get the fungi molds and algae for her diet, but she's well worth it."

"Fascinating," Riku says, starting to stare blankly.

"Third cost is implicit," Mickey continues, ignoring Riku's lack of concrete attention, "Would I be getting better productive efficiency allocating resources to other projects? For example, I keep fourteen space ships docked for training purposes here. Would it not be a better use of them to keep them in active service? Who knows... those fourteen ships might have been the difference between a total victory on Malleus V versus the current debacle. If so, the implied cost is the money I spent to send Sora and Uina out to Malleus on short notice, the penchants for the families of the casualties, and replacing the lost resources. I gave an order to sacrifice up to 40 tanks to insure a safe retreat; that's 80 million munny a tank we have to rebuild."

"...holy crap..." Riku comments after a small delay, the words finally reaching him.

"Well, to answer your question," Mickey says as he finally begins to wrap up, "Kiko's sunk cost so far is somewhere around 350,000 munny. Bail posts, contributions to the police, and things like her food and clothing. However, since she brought superior design handguns and sniper rifles that Uina reverse engineered into our finest firearms yet, I forgive her. Since the school is not excluding someone else to include her and the equipment is drawn from a fixed pool, the implied cost is practically nothing. Keeping her just involves spending the usual student average and that's practically nothing."

"Why don't we just take move her to an apartment in a city far from any spaceport, find her a job, and leave her alone?" Riku asks with total sincerity.

"No," Mickey says sternly.

"But-" Riku attempts.

"All celestial transfers end up for us or against us," Mickey explains, "We would be removing her from what she seems to hold sacred. There is no way she wouldn't hold a grudge against us and end up joining the forces of evil."

"Couldn't we just monitor her, then?" Riku offers, "Keep her from being found?"

"If they want to be found, it doesn't matter how much you try to hide a person," Mickey continues, "Fate will find a way. Besides, that would cost a lot more than just keeping her here. I figure... we need to keep her in our military no matter what. If worse comes to worse, we'll just make her a front line grunt. She's loyal, she can handle a gun, and she's apparently pretty resilient. Besides, Chou likes her and I consider keeping our only Feylinus as happy as possible a major priority. Remember my vision. The better question is how do we get Kiko to realize her full potential?"

"I don't know..." Riku says, standing up and stretching a little, "She's been doing this side-training. Lifting weights and trying to bulk up. I think she sees herself as some warrior and is forcing herself into situations her skills cannot handle."

"See, now we're making progress," Mickey says, getting up for another bottle from the fridge, "Talk her out of this pattern. Convince her to focus on the real objectives and stop trying to be something she isn't. Then, maybe she'll get better. I think she has some other issues she needs to work out, but one problem at a time."

"How do you think we should do that?" Riku asks, sitting back down, "She never follows anyone's advice any longer than it takes for them to give it."

"Not even your's?" Mickey asks, a bit puzzled.

"I keep bringing up the manual and asking her to read it; she never does," Riku explains, thinking a bit on his next words, "I should be fair, though. She has read some parts of it after I brought them up several times, but as far as I can tell, she still hasn't read it cover to cover."

"Still?" Mickey asks, looking a bit agitated, "Those are the most important 226 pages of this entire program "

"I know," Riku starts, "It's pretty horrendous how she doesn't take this seriously."

"It sounds like she has attention problems," Mickey starts, "What you need to do is make your words memorable. You can tell her all you want at dinner and she won't remember. It will just be another dinner where you scolded her and will be out of her mind as she walks through the door wondering why you don't love her. You need to do something unique."

"What do you recommend?" Riku asks.

"There's that festival coming up next week," Mickey starts, "Why not take her to it?"

"You mean as a date?" Riku asks, a slight tinge of discontent in his voice.

"Sure, why not?" Mickey says, "A first date would be very memorable. She does like you, after all."

"But I don't like _her_," Riku retorts, irritated.

"So?" Mickey says, "I didn't suggest you _propose_ to her. Just take her out for a day on the town. Show her a good time, get to know her, let her know you, and at some point, bring up her problems and how to fix them. It will be memorable and you'll have her full attention to get her to change. I'll leave it up to your discretion what you think needs to be changed to make her a better soldier."

"What if she gets the wrong idea?" Riku asks, still a bit irritated.

"If she does," Mickey starts, "Just let her down gently. The whole point behind dating in the first place is to see if you're compatible, after all. Who knows... maybe you really _are_ meant for her?"

"I seriously doubt that," Riku says, looking away with some minor embarrassment.

"Well, to each their own," Mickey says, "Speaking of the festival, Basil is going to be in town."

"Oh, him," Riku casually tosses out, apparently happy at the change of topic, "Is it just me or does he seem kind of like Pete?"

"He is Pete," Mickey declares, simply and succinctly. Riku just stares blankly for a little before making the softest of sighs, carefully working out those vital next words.

"I don't understand," Riku starts, "I thought Pete was such a troublemaker that you had to banish him twice."

"I did," Mickey admits.

"So why are you buying guns from him?" Riku asks, doing his best to restrain his outcry at something so stupid.

"I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends," Mickey says with a small bit of smug satisfaction, "Honestly, though, Pete isn't that bad of a guy. Grouchy and uncivilized, maybe, but he's not evil or anything. He might not be book smart, but he knows the ins and outs of factory manufacturing and firearms. Before starting up his own steamboat business, he used to work as the manager of an Ajax factory manufacturing hunting rifles. His insights into the process led to the best rifles of their time; the ones we use are only one generation off from that very design. If there's someone I can trust first-hand to make a good gun, it's him."

"Doesn't he hate you, though?" Riku asks.

"I wouldn't call it hate," Mickey starts, "Anyway, I want you to set up a meeting with him. I think his new euphemism is 'shawl', but he'll probably recognize you anyway. He's been subtly sabotaging our guns and I want you to set him straight. I kind of expected it, though; I didn't make it too hard to figure out who we are. We're trying to get on his good side, though, so you're going to order a new shipment with a new design. I'll give you a script. Any questions?"

"I don't like this plan," Riku admits very frankly, "But I trust your judgment."

"Thank you," Mickey says, hopping up out of his seat, "Anything else you want to talk about?"

"Not that I can think of," Riku says, getting up out of his chair. One can tell they know each other pretty well just from their sense of upcoming closure.

"It was nice seeing you," Micky says, shaking Riku's hand pretty well despite being half his size, "Treat yourself with the expense account some time. That's what it's there for."

"I'll think about it," Riku says, awkwardly retracting his hand, "I'll see you later."

**--**

When one thinks about it, pink is actually a very unusual color. Stereotyped as the ultimate girly color, it can be hard to believe that it used to be seen as a boy color. Indeed, reddish colors were viewed as masculine compared to bluish feminine colors: the inverse of what they ultimately became. How they ended up that way is anybody's guess, but perhaps it was observation of flowers and the favor they have amongst women. Oddly enough, pink isn't that common in nature; plenty of plants but not many animals or insects. Perhaps it's why the color seems to stand out?

Regardless, humanity would certainly have a hard time accepting the catacombs of this alien planet. Bright pink water flows over pink vines and a bright pink pollen washes over the subdued pink stones. Patches of some type of pink moss hang from pink stalagtites, individual pink strands breaking off from the cohesive pink whole. Everywhere one can see, there is nothing but pink in this environment. The only things that aren't pink in these caverns are the two conspicuous humans. One is a buff young girl in a green outfit sitting on a pink mound of... something while the other is an older woman in a tattered and filthy lab coat holding some type of tablet computer. The former seems kind of annoyed while the latter looks just a little uncomfortable. Something on her tablet computer seems to stand out enough to break the tension.

"It looks like King Mickey made a military alliance with the Daeh Yeo Mar Empire," the woman in the lab coat comments. The girl in green makes an irritated grumble as she reclines a bit on her mound.

"Do I look like I care?" the girl quips with moderate irritation.

"Well, Male-" the woman tries to explain.

"Did she give you permission to speak her name?!" the girl shouts with a cross look on her face, suddenly sitting straight up.

"No, ma'am, Miss Mint," the woman cowers, stepping back a little in recoil.

"Use her proper title," the girl in green named Mint commands, mumbling something indistinct but insulting sounding as she reclines back into her mound. The woman in the lab coat composes herself as she considers her next statement.

"The Mistress told me to tell you about anything important while she's away," the woman explains.

"Again, do I look like I care?" Mint retorts.

"Well... if they bolster their ranks with the Etoquin..." the woman says, trailing off as she notices the mound start to rise. Mint sighs as she forms a spike of green crystal from the gem in her bracelet and stabs downwards into the alien creature, spraying some viscous pink fluid all over as the critter clumps back to the ground.

"These things just don't want to die," Mint comments, wiping the pink blood off her face and reclining backwards again. The woman in the lab coat decides she doesn't care enough to finish her sentence, turning away from the barbaric sight as she continues reading her tablet computer. It's not like she has to worry about being beaten up over this. Mint is the one that does all the ass-whuppings in this unit. Perhaps it's by fate that a sickly looking woman in a black cloak walks in accompanied by a gigantic cyborg. The latter is carrying a haphazardly uprooted stone altar with a shiny red prism protruding from the top. He apparently can't even be bothered to properly remove the only valuable part.

"Ah, Dr. Goldwater," the black cloaked woman starts, "You look like you have something important to say."

"Um..." the woman dubbed Goldwater says, trying her best to avoid eye contact, "King Mickey announced an alliance with the Daeh Yeo Mar Empire."

"Those upstarts?" Maleficent dryly comments, continuing her deliberate stride, "We need not worry. They are but a mere annoyance."

"But what about the Etoquin Armored Legion?" Goldwater asks, a mild expression of fear on her face.

"Mere flies," Maleficent comments with a blank expression on her face, "It proves only his desperation. The fool of a king plays into our hands with every move he makes and thinks mere numbers will remedy his inferior tactics. No number of alliances will fix a tactic as misinformed as sending Riku right into our waiting arms. No number of armored walkers will outflank, outmaneuver, or outgun us so long as you are on our side and maintain our invincible Heartless army, my dear scientist general. Once we locate the third prism, no force within or without this universe can stop us from claiming what is rightfully ours. The fool can only delay the inevitable."

"Where is Cenari?" Goldwater asks, not caring to listen to yet another mission statement.

"He battles the so-called Lightside Heartless now," Maleficent explains, motioning forward with her scepter as she continues her stride, "Such bothersome little creatures, pure of essence but just as mindless and ruthless as their corrupted brethren. Perhaps violence is the ultimate reality of all living creatures?"

"Then how are we going to leave this dump?" Mint asks, jumping to her feet and quickly catching pace with her mistress. Goldwater decides to follow a little to Mondale's side. It's always nice to have a gigantic meat shield separating one from the less sympathetic members of their team. Removes the impulse factor.

"Fear not," Maleficent starts, stepping over an eviscerated pink humanoid, "We shall not find ourselves stranded on this abominable world. I ordered only for him to stall; not to eliminate. Once we're back aboard his ship, he shall return and we shall leave this forsaken planet."

"I'm still impressed Neverland could ever hold something like this..." Mint comments as the group make their way out of the caves.


	57. I Believe I Can Fly

Kiko wakes up with that groggy muddiness of partial sleep pounding away at her head. It's so bothersome to arise after only a couple hours of rest. Not even very good rest, with her face wet and salty while still burrowed in her pillow. The sheets feel kind of odd, with her arms and legs uncovered while some bunch up between her thighs. It's irritating enough that something disturbed her out of this peaceful rest, but to leave her in a state that can't allow an easy re-entry to blissful sleep is unacceptable. Taking a few minutes to gather the resolve to make any move lest she decrease her comfort, Kiko raises her head... and quickly burrows back as her eyes burn from light. How is that possible? She usually wakes up at morning light; that was definitely quite a bit brighter.

Steeling herself for some dark-vision burn, Kiko pushes herself off of the pillow. As the dull pain washes through her head, she quickly glances around to find the alarm clock. 18:54... how is that even possible? There's no way she could have slept for over 22 hours. The school wouldn't allow that. She thinks back on what she can last remember. She had that date with Riku, went to the festival, Riku told her all that dark stuff about his life, cut out early, and she came upstairs to let her emotions consume her. She must have cried herself to sleep somehow. How undignified.

So it's still Sunday and she now has a vision to act upon. Good timing, too; she was getting restless the past couple months. She's pretty sure it's very unlikely that Riku could end up in 'Maleficent's waiting arms' over the course of the afternoon, so there's still time to change the future. She leaps out of bed, shaking the metaphorical cobwebs off as she drops her dress to the floor. She's certainly never wearing that thing again after Riku's cutting comments. Grabbing the first shirt and pants she finds in her closet, Emily dons the outfit in seconds flat and rushes out the door.

Through the hallways she dashes, Riku's last statement on her mind. He promised to meet her at dinner, so she just needs to find him in the dining hall. Striding through the open doors reveals the place to be pretty sparse. It's understandable: there is a festival in town, after all. Just two tables have anybody, with some boring people at one while Sora and Kairi sit together at another. No Riku anywhere in sight. Still, there's no way Sora returned from a harsh-sounding battle without seeing Riku, so he's as good a lead as any. Emily walks up, the conversation becoming audible as she draws close.

"...and as hundreds more of those robots came in," Sora explains to Kairi's rapt attention, "The Heavy Behemoth summoned even _more_ meteors to smash them all."

"Goodness!" Kairi remarks, "How many robots were there?"

"I lost count," Sora answers, "More kept coming in as the robots there just kept rebuilding the broken ones and going back at the monster. It was so crowded, I had to start cutting through them to get to the Heartless. It wouldn't have been so bad if their claws could actually cut through the armor, but they weren't even scratching it."

"Um... hi," Emily says, not entirely happy to interrupt.

"Oh, hey, Kiko," Sora says, smiling and waving.

"Kiko!" Kairi says exuberantly, smiling widely, "It's so nice to see you! How are you?"

"Um... I'm okay," Emily says, a little uncomfortable as she sits down, "What are you guys talking about?"

"Just that operation on Malleus V," Sora explains, "Uina used some new machines that build a robot army, but they just keep building and building. We destroyed the Heartless, but now the robots are crowding the planet."

"That sucks," Emily comments, not really that interested, "Where's Riku?"

"He's going to help retake Malleus from the machines," Sora explains, "I would have stayed, but King Mickey wanted me to take a vacation. Have you been to the festival yet?"

"Yes..." Emily says, realizing something, "...I thought you went with Kairi yesterday?"

"Did Riku tell you that?" Sora asks.

"...yes," Emily says, not needing any further information, "I had a vision. I need to stop him."

"Why?" Sora asks, "The robots don't attack anybody but Heartless. He'll be completely safe."

"Maleficent is going to get him somehow," Emily responds, "Where is he?"

"He's in a top secret meeting," Sora says, "Come on, relax. He's going to be with a big army with tanks and hover fighters. We can tell King Mickey about your vision when they're done."

"Then it will be too late," Emily says, not convinced anything but her direct involvement will save him.

"Don't worry about it," Kairi says cheerfully, "Riku can take care of himself. Say... want to come with us to the concert?"

"I can't," Emily responds, getting up out of her chair.

"Wait!" Sora shouts after Emily to no avail.

**--**

With no time and Sora's lack of support, Emily comes to a conclusion: she must get to King Mickey's office on her own. She knows her vision won't be regarded as anything more than a curiosity without the specifics of how Riku will be nabbed. However, she can't just walk right in. If Mickey is smart, the place is probably very secure. She'll have to use her stealth training to the fullest. Unfortunately, she doesn't exactly have a quartermaster to hand out gear for this clandestine operation. She might have the clothing and the make-up kit, but she doesn't have any surveillance or diversion gear. She'll have to improvise.

Perhaps it's fortunate that the exercise room is unmonitored. There's no real reason to believe that anybody would walk out with sculpted chunks of metal, after all. Emily starts by equipping herself with a one meter long, twenty five pound metal bar. The applications of just a simple staff are endless and while the weight makes it a little unwieldy, it opens up some possibilities in and of itself. With her tool of choice determined, she takes a running harness and removes all the weight packets. Hooks intended for exercise machines combined with 2.5 pound discs for the barbells should be sufficient for distractions. It's a good thing they're rubberized; metal on metal is the worst possible thing for stealth, after all. Combined with her pocket mirror and hair clips, this is as good as it's going to get.

With her gear set, Emily hurries down to the spiral atrium while going over her plan. She's pretty sure there has to be some relevance to the Square games. She has seen familiar sights like the cage elevators and the grand hallways. What she hasn't seen are the dimly lit storage areas with boxes all around and glowing machinery of some kind. There's enough uncharted space on the map and it seems only natural that they appear somewhere.

With her rush to save Riku, it doesn't take long at all to reach the unmarked door from earlier. Time to use her stealth training to the fullest. She thinks back to her professor's doctrines on the topic. There are three things an infiltrator must always keep in mind: guards, monitoring devices, and locks. All three might take a great variety of form, but they all use similar principles in the end. As Emily approaches the door, she checks around for guards. No robots, humans, or otherwise in sight. Standing at the door, she checks for monitoring devices. No camera, no tripwire, no appearance of pressure plates, nothing. Holding the handle, she checks for locks. No fingerprint pad, no trick mechanism, not even a deadbolt. Things are looking almost too easy.

Emily cracks open the door and glances inside with her mirror. Seems it's just a normal office. No guard, no device. She pushes the door open and quietly closes it behind her as she surveys the room. Just seems like some stripped office. There's a desk with a chair, computer, and shelves, but no stationary, books, or storage disks. There's a full body mirror opposite the door and a filing cabinet beside the desk, all the drawers extended with nothing inside. A good place for somebody to move in, but the lack of an official room number gives the impression it's not supposed to hold anybody.

Emily thinks about where the deeper entry point would lie. The mirror is way too obvious. Her stealth class taught her never to go for the obvious entry when possible. They're usually monitored and lead into traps. Considering this is something taught by the school, it's more than likely they employ these very countermeasures. She needs to do a sweep for less obvious points of entry and rule those out before trying her luck with the blatant. The floor is the first place to check. It only takes a quick walk around while prodding with her bar to dispel that notion. Next spot would be behind the filing cabinet and to her surprise, there it is. A small square opening covered by a moving block. A light shove and she's in.

This next room is a bit of a doozy. As she expected, it does bare a faint resemblance to the basement in the first game. Caged off areas, crates of some indeterminate metal, a machine swirling glowing blue water within a glass tube. The floors and ceilings are some type of grated steel, with it apparent that this is just one giant room with many artificial platforms. Just as suspected, there's some type of drop-down cage right above the entrance from the mirror. Six hover robots armed with clubs and lassos wander around, none of them yet aware of Emily. Not taking her chances, she ducks behind a scattering of boxes least likely to be checked. After collecting herself, she starts moving with the flow as she charts the paths.

Whoever programmed the robots must be a genius at stealth infiltration in their own right. The apparent needs of the machinery prevent them from using just a flat open floor and the expense of maintaining a large number of robots seems to have limited their deployment. Therefore, full attention must be given to the measures that can be spared and the designer did a beautiful job. Just spectacular. There are two points to the next platform up: a stairwell and a wide gap near the wall. Both points are always visible to the robots, one not turning until another can take its watch. At any given time, four robots are checking the larger nooks and crannies. The two spots they don't ever bother to check are the false entrance and the machine. Probably not a good idea to go near either.

Emily does spot a flaw in their, though: a five second interval where the four wanderers are far away from the gap. If she times it so she can hit a metal crate near the wall watcher with a disc, she can possibly distract it just long enough to dash up the gap. The minute and forty seconds needed for the rotation to come full circle manages to be both boring and stressful, four moves into new nooks with barely any room for error. Right on schedule, they fall into the arrangement.

Emily tosses a disc across, aiming for it to roll behind the robot. With a clink, the robot spins to face and follows it with a manic speed. Too much time already wasted on watching this machine, Emily hops to her feet, jumps over some crates, leaps at the wall, and bounces off towards the next platform. She grabs onto the ledge and pulls herself inwards as quickly as possible, her finger tips the only thing visible either above or below the floor. Not taking any chances, she peeks above for a split second. No robots in sight and two good nooks opposite of each other within sprinting distance. She carefully flips herself over the guard rail and takes up her new position.

This floor is quite a bit easier than the last. Only five robots and just as many crates, with the glowing blue machine apparently continuing from the floor below. Not only is it much easier to evade them, but there's a twenty second gap where the stairwell is completely unmonitored. However, its positioning on the opposite side from the one leading back down is unfortunate. Still, it's practically an open stairwell and doing a wall jump at this height is worrisome. She'd much rather save a disc and not chance an alarm. As the window of opportunity presents itself, she dashes towards the stairwell in less than five seconds.

It's a good thing she has those extra fifteen seconds because she immediately hears the boosters of a robot right above. A careful glance upwards reveals it to be turning around a corner of crates just two meters away. Behind it a decent ways is another, the line of sight from the stairwell broken for maybe a tenth of a second. Taking residence on the steps with her stomach flat, she watches the only pathway in her sight with a vague hope of avoiding detection. A hope fulfilled, with none ever looking down the stairs after what appear to be three full rotations. Lucky.

As far as Emily can tell, there are four distinct robots. The timing needed for this pattern combined with the estimated size reuses two robots in shifts watching the stairs. Two take shorter paths before turning and come back out just one row closer. Without being able to do a proper flow, she can't be entirely certain on the pattern. Still, if her educated guesses have any merit, there's a brief window where the wanderers are concentrated on one side. She'll have to take a leap of faith on this one.

Emily hurls a disc to angle around a corner. The clink and resulting scrambles of jet boosters leaves her path clear just long enough to duck to a side. With that, she can probably get to the wall gap just fine. She strides across, careful to check around each corner. As she comes within sight of the gap, she gets what feels like the biggest startle of her life as a robot hovers right out in front of her. Here it comes: the beat-down. The clicking noise must be its servos readying the ass-whupping.

"Card," says a harsh robotic voice. Emily realizes that it wants her I.D., but she's not authorized and her instincts have already taken hold, anyway. She grabs the bar from her back and smashes the beacon transmitter with one not-so-graceful arc. The flash of sparks accompany a loud blare, sending her into overdrive as it readies an attack. She spins on her heel and smashes the head off with all her brutish might, the alarm louder than ever. Not even a final coup-de-tat thrust into the clockwork heart of the beast can silence it.

Loud jet blasts roar from all directions, the alarm like red meat for the wolves. She needs to think fast. Think fast. Think fast. Grab its club. Re-arm just in case. Run for the gap. No robots in the way. Leap towards wall. Leap off wall. Pull in towards rail.

Fourth platform. Two robots, one door, no crates. Alarm blaring below, jets full blast. Not a flinch. No way to distract. No way to subvert. Must fight. Leap over rail. Robots turn. Two discs; transmitters gone. Lassos fire; both miss. Clubs swing; too slow. Emily smash. One head off; alarm. Other too close. Club swing. Glancing blow; right arm. Pain. Spasm. Drop weapon. Another swing; miss. Jets closer. Must kill. Another swing; miss. Steal club. Smash. Head off. Victory. Run to door.

Crash.

Time seems to slow down as the door bursts open, flinging Emily back like a rag doll. As she flies through the air for what feels like an eternity, she thinks on how she has failed her hero. She was so close; so very close. That had to be the door. It just had to be. Why station two guards just for it? Now at the peak of her arc, the alarms, jet boosters, and energy crackle of the unseen zooming attacker come to a bombastic crescendo. She hasn't just sealed the fate of her hero; she has sealed her own. An unambiguous attack upon the school premises themselves, three robots dead on the path to the king himself. She's going to be held to trial. Not even by the over-accommodating Radiant Garden police, statute of limitations irregardless. She's going to get a court martial and a life sentence on King Mickey's planet... is it still Disney Castle even though Disney is a real world corporation? Who cares?

She's now bouncing off the ground. Only a second so far, but it feels like an hour. An hour to ruminate on all her failures and wonder what she could have done differently. Perhaps she really shouldn't have taken that stairwell even with its window of opportunity. It seems so obvious now that the best way to stop an infiltration is to mislead the would-be agent into a corner. As noted, a master infiltrator designed these paths.

Emily lands on the ground, sliding to a gradual stop as her attacker closes in. Her senses disrupted, she can't make out anything but the color red and a blade against her throat. It's not unreasonable to think that she may even end up dead right here, right now. An apparent assassination attempt, dangerous enough to bypass two floors of robots and fight past another two. In the heat of the moment, it wouldn't be too hard to just kill the offender. However, to her luck, this man doesn't. He backs off a little out of apparent recognition. Emily's sight finally clears up enough to reveal him to be none other than Riku.

"It's just Kiko," Riku practically spits out with sheer irritation, desummoning his keyblade and standing up as the sound of hover jets close in. He holds up an I.D. card that gets over a dozen sweeps from orange lights all around, clicking noises following suit. The robots all head off in a calm manner afterwards, the incident forgotten just as sudden as it happened.

"What the hell is going on here?" asks a familiar sounding male voice.

"I don't know," Riku says, walking away from Emily without so much as looking back, "Ask her."

Emily picks herself up to find a couple people standing around, all looking pretty miffed at her intrusion. There is Riku, still in his standard outfit from earlier. Uina, wearing a grey camouflage outfit with the jacket unbuttoned. Some familiar looking military officer, complete with raised cap. And none other than King Mickey, with some type of glowing purple sword in his hand. The last presses something on the hilt as he walks over, the blade retracting piece by piece into the handle.

"Kiko, I presume?" Mickey asks with a surprising sincerity as he pockets the weapon.

"Um... yes..." Emily says, unsure of how to react. Mickey grabs her right hand with both of his.

"I'm King Mickey," Mickey says, shaking vigorously, "Pleased to meet you."

"Um... thanks..." Emily says, retracting her hand nervously.

"Come, come," Mickey says in an inviting tone as he motions towards the door, "I have snacks."

"Okay..." Emily murmurs, following behind. Everybody else is already back in the room, with some other military personnel that Emily doesn't recognize all standing around a tactical display. Mickey leads her past to the chairs, the eyes of the others following them with a suspicious curiosity. It's not every day that an infiltrator is invited in for snacks, after all. Mickey swivels a chair to an angle, Emily picking up the invitation and gently sitting down. Nice and plush just like they look. Mickey starts over to the fridge.

"So..." Mickey starts, rummaging through the freezer, "What brings you here?"

"I had a dream," Emily answers apprehensively, ignoring the groans and cynical expressions of the unknown others. Seems they have a pretty low opinion on seers as well. She's starting to get cold feet from this negative response, but she must continue.

"Relax, take your time," Mickey says, pulling out an ice cream bar, "From the beginning."

"Well..." Emily starts, trying to gather her thoughts and skipping the beginning, "I saw a pink cave. Pink everything."

"Feylinus?" Mickey asks, handing over the snack. Emily isn't much of a fan of these things, but whatever. It would be in her worst interest to decline anything from the king at this time.

"I think so," Emily continues, taking a polite nibble of the treat, "Mint and that scientist were there."

"Dr. Goldwater?" Mickey asks.

"...how do you even know her?" Emily asks, honestly confused now. She seems really low profile in the scheme of things.

"I follow all leads," Mickey answers, succinct yet vague, "Continue."

"May I go now?" Riku interrupts.

"No!" Emily shouts, the time to act upon her, "They'll get you!"

"Who's going to get Riku?" Mickey asks, holding up his arm as Riku starts to say something. He backs off.

"Maleficent," Emily answers, tossing the half-finished treat into the nearby waste bin. Mickey looks at her quizzically for a little before continuing.

"Maleficent?" Mickey asks, "There's no way. We have all our best men working to keep Sora and Riku safe."

"But she said you 'sent him into her waiting arms'," Emily clarifies.

"Riku's going to the last place Maleficent would ever dare," Mickey retorts, "There are millions and millions of robots that all want her and the Heartless dead. She wouldn't last ten seconds out in the open."

"But-" Emily attempts.

"We need more context," Mickey says, "Let's get back into your story. You said you saw Mint and Dr. Goldwater doing something. What was it?"

"Well..." Emily starts, thinking hard on her dream, "They were just standing around. Goldwater was reading some Palm Pilot or something. She said you announced an alliance with the Dah-ey Yea-oh Mah-r Empire."

A collective muted gasp goes through the ranks of the officers, followed by murmurs all over. Mickey has some combination of astonishment and fear on his face; as though he really didn't expect those words to come out. Everybody else besides Riku are looking at Mickey, obviously thinking something but not outright stating it. While this alliance is an elephant in the room for everybody else, it certainly isn't for Emily. To her, the better question is how anyone can take Mickey seriously with that voice. Seriously, it sounds ridiculous to hear such grand proclamations and explanations about economics and war coming from that helium tone. How did he ever keep the masses from laughing at him during his speeches? Mickey forces his face back into something magnanimous as he turns to face his guests.

"Well, gentlemen," Mickey says with some finality, walking over to the holographic display and shutting it down, "I've decided we'll just deploy the 7th, 8th, 10th, and 14th divisions. Use orbital fire on the foundries, do some sweeps with aircraft, another with tanks, and root out the last with infantry. We don't need any heroes for this one. Good luck and godspeed."

"Wait a second," says the familiar officer as the others half-heartedly leave the room, "That girl mentioned the Daeh Yeo Mar Empire. We aren't seriously considering allying with those fascists?"

"I thought about it," Mickey admits, "But I'm not going to do anything until I have no choice. Thank you, Captain Eades, that is all."

"...sir, yes, sir," Eades says with an obligatory salute, walking out of the room with a hurried gait. Mickey closes the door after him, leaving only Riku and Uina in the room with them. A good long while goes by in silence as everybody just kind of looks at each other.

"Nice job breaking it, Kiko," Uina says in a droll tone, finally breaking the silence.

"What?" Emily asks, now feeling like it would almost be better to stand trial for a suspected assassination attempt than... this.

"Want me to explain?" Uina asks towards Mickey.

"Go ahead," Mickey says as he walks back to the chairs, the stress taking its toll on him.

"The Daeh Yeo Mar Empire uses a caste system," Uina explains, "The lower castes are beaten, broken, and abused. They work 18 hour days in horrible conditions, sleep 12 to a room, and barely get anything to eat. When they can no longer work, they're cut loose in the wild. The middle castes are constantly monitored and driven to paranoia as they get scrutinized by the secret police. If they show too much emotion, spend too much time alone, or otherwise seem like they might rebel, they're quietly taken away and erased from existence. They handle the more intellectual jobs. The upper castes get to enjoy total power over those below them. They revel in it. They just work to maintain this government and keep everybody else in line."

"That's horrible," Emily comments, "Why don't we stop them?"

"It's not in our place to do so," Mickey picks up, "We're not some intergalactic police force trying to root out injustice for some humanitarian cause. Governments of the past used to excuse invasions by claiming it was to liberate people from these regimes. It was always the planets with something valuable and they didn't exactly make life too much better when they finished. Because of that, we're no longer allowed to interfere with other worlds unless they attack another and while they have a massive army, the Daeh Yeo Mar Empire has done nothing yet. They have been more than diplomatic in their dealings with the rest of the worlds. Their brutal government makes them unpopular, but it has been surprisingly peaceful."

"Eades really hates them," Uina comments. Kind of stating the obvious, but whatever.

"I trust your vision now," Mickey starts, "If we lost Riku, I'd start up an alliance as soon as possible. Get on the wire with the Grand Council and negotiate a joint military alliance. No sooner than the peace conference next week, though. We have time. You said they were at a Feylinus hive?"

"Yes," Emily says, now pretty sure it could be nothing else.

"Any clues where or why?" Mickey asks, realizing something and turning around, "Sorry, it's rude of me to leave you guys standing there. I'll call some chairs up for you."

"I'm okay," Riku says, sitting down on the floor. Uina does some type of short wave with his index and middle finger together, standing in place.

"They found a prism," Emily explains, "Said something about Neverland. I don't know... isn't Neverland the place with Peter Pan and Captain Hook?"

"It was," Mickey comments, "Hook disappeared after the first war. I just assume he's dead or worse."

"Why are Feylinus there?" Emily asks.

"They move when they feel threatened," Uina explains, "They manage to get to whole new planets without being seen. We don't know how they do it and Chou won't tell us."

"Speaking of Chou," Mickey says, motioning Uina over to him, "I would be happy if you could fetch her and Sora."

"Sure thing, my liege," Uina responds, "Anything else you need? Some beluga caviar, maybe?"

"Three more chairs would be nice," Mickey answers, ignoring the remark.

"Yes, sir," Uina says with a half-serious salute, walking out at a brisk pace. Mickey starts to turn back when something out of the corner of his eye bugs him.

"Oh, come on, Riku," Mickey says in an almost playful tone, "Don't sit on the floor like that. Here, take my seat."

"That's okay," Riku says as Mickey hops out of his chair. Mickey just looks at Riku pensively for a little before picking up his chair and walking straight to him. Riku hops out of the way with the chair less than a meter from his face.

"Heads up, coming through," Mickey announces. He drops the chair down right where Riku was sitting and motions towards it. Riku gives a sigh and takes the seat after all.

"I don't think a king should be standing," Riku comments.

"I'll just use my desk chair," Mickey answers, startling Emily as he lifts the chair with her in it effortlessly. He carries it over and places it perpendicular to Riku's chair. Afterwards, he walks off to the fridge as though nothing unusual happened.

"Want something to drink?" Mickey offers as he rummages in the fridge, "White Dwarf, Red Nebula, Blue Giant, 7-Up?"

"7-Up?" Emily asks, the name way too familiar for her taste.

"I saw it at the supermarket the other day and had to try it," Mickey responds, "It's too sugary for me. Want some?"

"...sure," Emily says, not sure if she's more curious about this old world brand or the fact that a king goes to the supermarket like any Joe off the street. Mickey brings over a bottle with this old-fashioned green and yellow motif, '7-Up' in block white letters. Not quite the design she remembers, but it is unmistakably the same brand. In his other hand is a small desk chair more suited for someone barely three feet tall.

"Talk to me," Mickey says as he sits down and hands over the bottle, "Is life in the service treating you well?"

"I guess," Emily says apprehensively as she cracks open her beverage, thinking of a way to get on Mickey's good... better side, "I'm not as good a student as Chou."

"Hmm?" Mickey says, puzzled but with rapt attention.

"I felt what she did to me back at that temple," Emily starts, Riku now also paying more attention to her, "I could feel everything. I could see that monster make moves way in advance just by its twitch alone. I could count the hairs on its head as I jumped over it. It was complete control."

"You defeated a type VI back there," Mickey comments.

"It was almost dead, anyway," Riku corrects, "It had a whole temple dropped right on top of it."

"Still a type VI," Mickey retorts, "That sets the record for any natural human."

"She was pumped full of Chou's fighting juice...," Riku counters, "...or whatever we want to call it."

"Come on, Riku," Mickey says with playful annoyance, "Don't spoil her moment of glory."

"I'm just saying..." Riku says, lying back and looking away.

"You're right, though," Mickey continues, "Chou is a great student. Simply magnificent. My thoughts are consumed by her and the benefits she would offer if she can realize her full potential. Towards that, I need you to be the best friend you can. Do you think you can handle that?"

"Yes," Emily responds, not entirely serious. She really doesn't want to have to do this. She wishes she could just stay as far from Chou as possible, but so long as she has all this favor and wants nothing more than Emily's companionship, she is bound to her. To have the highest authority figure, indeed, the king tell her that she must stay with the pink alien is one of the most crushing things she has ever heard.

"This is my secret mission to you," Mickey says as he picks up Emily's hand, ignoring an eye roll from Riku, "You aren't just a soldier in training any more. You are a hero. Heroes aren't just valiant warriors holding back the onslaught of darkness. They are those who want to see the universe a better place. The medics that nurture, the crafters that build, and the friends that embolden are all just as vital to the war effort as any soldier or tank. Be that friend. Be that hero."

"Okay..." Emily says as she returns the light grasp, not feeling very inspired. He didn't need to follow up that command with some speech, but whatever. The door opens to reveal Uina with Chou, Sora, and three robots carrying plush chairs. Sora gives a slight nod towards Riku.

"Ah, Grandmaster Uina," Mickey says, relinquishing his hold on Emily, "Welcome back."

"Thank you," Uina says, pointing the three robots at the other corners of the makeshift star of chairs. They place them down and wander right back out. Sora and Chou both take seats as Uina continues to stand there.

"Since the Kuromeru Reifujin is your project," Mickey starts, rising out of his chair and dragging it back to the desk, "I'll leave it to you. I trust you'll lock the door on your way out?"

"Of course," Uina responds.

"Good luck and godspeed," Mickey says, walking out of the room. A good twenty seconds or so of silence goes by as tiny foot steps travel through the corridors away from this room. Uina gives a sigh as he walks over to the mainframe.

"He gave you the hero speech, huh?" Uina asks, pressing a large button. It takes a second before Emily realizes who he's talking to.

"Yes," Emily says.

"Figures," Uina says as the screen fires up into some text based operating system, "You said Neverland, right?"

"Yes," Emily responds. Uina types in some stuff and brings up a star chart. A reticle outlines a bluish green planet circling a goldish star.

"Neverland," Uina starts, "Fourth planet of the titular system. Very, very high magic saturation. One with a strong will can make their beliefs a reality regardless of their affinity. Believe you can fly and it just might happen. Post-industrial but pre-flight technological development. It would remain uninitiated, but as a center of operations for the Heartless, we had to break protocol. First contact was established but the governments keep it as forbidden knowledge. We have no strategic assets on the planet; since the governments keep the knowledge of other worlds from its citizens, they don't even want an unofficial embassy through a front. We're not allowed to operate without express permission, so this will have to be a stealth drop. Chou, where is the hive?"

"Huh?" Chou asks, a slight tinge of worry in her voice.

"Kiko mentioned a hive," Uina continues, "We brought you here to help us find it."

"...I don't know," Chou says, shuddering as her eyes start to get a little misty, "They kicked me out and left for a new planet. I don't know where they are."

"How do we know it's her hive, anyway?" Riku quickly asks. Chou stabilizes a little with that question out in the open.

"I didn't say it was her hive," Uina corrects, "It's just my understanding that a Feylinus prince is expected to go out, find another hive, court a princess, and form a new hive together."

"They never taught me to use the Pyrmaolindr," Chou says, trying to suppress her tears to little avail.

"...how do you decide where to settle?" Uina asks, starting the holographic display and bringing up a planetary map.

"Um..." Chou stammers, thinking pretty hard, "We must stay far away from other people."

"How far?" Uina asks, pressing a button and bringing up colored portions apparently showing the city limits.

"I don't know..." Chou says, sniffling a little but otherwise recovering ever so slightly, "A hundred kilometers at least?"

"What else is needed?" Uina asks, typing in some stuff that draws a border a little outwards from all the city limits.

"Um..." Chou stammers, "We stay underground most of the time, but we need to go up for air some times. Mountains are good for that. We need underground water streams, but they have to go to an ocean far away from other people. Our water turns pink when we use it and we don't want people drinking it."

"Uh, huh," Uina says, typing in some stuff. The map first displays all the mountains and colors off the ones too close to civilization. It then shows all the underwater streams and colors off the ones that don't cross said mountains. It finishes by coloring off all the streams that stray too close to civilization. All in all, only one place seems suitable by the standards given.

"Well, we have a match," Uina continues, turning around and glancing at Emily, "Kiko, thank you very much for your invaluable information, but your services are no longer required for this mission. You can just walk back out the way you came. Dismissed."

"Um... okay..." Emily says, standing up and heaving towards the door. No real point objecting; she has already saved Riku for the time being.

"No!" Chou objects, forcefully, as she jumps up and blocks Emily.

"Why not?" Uina asks, "We don't need Kiko for this mission."

"I won't go without her," Chou says, grabbing Emily's arm and holding on tight. Already too close for comfort, but she promised she'd be the best friend she can.

"Come on..." Uina starts, "We don't need her. There's no infiltration or assassination required."

"No!" Chou shouts, dragging Emily in closer, "Not without Kiko!"

"...fine, what do I care?" Uina sighs, "Kiko, your role is as tourist. Stand back, don't say anything, don't do anything, and follow Sora's orders. Got it?"

"Okay..." Emily says, feeling a bit worn out by all of this. Chou finally lets go and heads back to her seat. Emily sits back down in her chair as well.

"Well, then," Uina exhales, "I'm going to request a G3 Long-Range Conversion be dropped off ahead of us. We'll have to assume Maleficent and company have some idea about the planet, so I'm going to have you guys stop in London under some pretense of politics. Not sure how we'll disguise Chou, but I'll think of something. You will go to a government building and sneak out the back just to make sure you lose any trails. You'll then go to the tank, head over to the hive, get the prism, and bring it back to me. Any questions?"

"Won't the Feylinus run away when we come close to them?" Riku asks.

"Not if everybody has fanlasnir," Chou corrects.

"We will be leaving in..." Uina says, pulling out a pocket watch, "...now. Go get your fighting clothes and meet me in the front hall. Dismissed."

**--**

Emily heads back to her room to prepare for this new adventure. She's not sure why, but she's not really that excited this time around. Each adventure has left her more battered, broken, and bruised than the last. Why will this one be any different?

Still, she's at least a little curious if Neverland will allow her to fly. It seemed to work on Goofy in the games despite his lack of magic... where are Donald and Goofy, anyway? It's like they don't even exist any more. Oh, well... probably out on better assignments. None of her concern. She quickly packs the outfit that came with her into this universe in a nearby bag along with the brooch she forgot earlier and walks down to the front hall. Just as expected, Sora, Riku, Uina, and Chou are all present and accounted for.

"Welcome," Uina greets, "We all know the drill, I presume. Let's 'load up and lock in'."

Kiko nudges her way next to Riku as they march outside towards one of the starports. She is going to sit next to him come hell or high water. She has some things that need discussion whether or not he likes it. Unfortunately, Chou seems to have the same idea for Kiko and has nudged her way to her side. Whatever. Chou will probably just sleep the whole trip, anyway. They all get on board the _Four Winds_, taking their positions at the round tables. Kiko managed to get a chair that doesn't have a control laptop this time. Lucky. With her idol on her right and the alien on her left, she's in about as good as position as she can hope.

"Hey, Riku," Kiko tries to start, defeated by his deep sleep, "...bleh."


	58. Radio Friendly

The hills overlooking Hometown are just as beautiful as ever. With a mighty abandoned observatory standing at the top, the sight below is just as fascinating as above. From here, the whole town is visible from horizon to horizon, the lights glittering in the distance. It's a sad reality that few people come here, urban legends abound of curses and criminals alike hanging like a pall. Indeed, with no lighting but what the sky offers, it is a great place for such activities.

Tonight certainly is ideal for such crimes to occur. With a waning crescent moon hanging in the sky, things are only just bright enough to see within a couple meters. One stretch offers the cover of thick woodland on one side and a sheer drop on the other, not a lamp post anywhere. It is presumed that any criminal element would favor this spot to dispose of bodies and other troublesome evidence. The ground always does seem a bit too fresh around here. One such vehicle, a dark candy apple red BMW convertible with top up and windows down, comes to a rolling stop just beside this fateful stretch. Four teenage girls, thin and athletic, argue inside over pretty much everything.

"Why don't you ever let us listen to the radio?" asks a brown haired girl in the back seat. Pretty cozy back there since this is The Ultimate Driving Machine®, not The Ultimate Riding Machine®.

"Because it's _always_ the same, Jenny," responds the blonde driver towards the group as a whole with an air of annoyance, "When I drive, I listen to my Mötley Crüe CDs. Best driving music there is. Somebody, usually Tammy, says 'that's so cheesy, that's so VH1, _I __**hate**__ hair metal!_' and changes it to B96 without my permission. Since I'm so nice, I allow it. So we listen to crap from Fifty Cent, Kanye West, Soulja Boy. Lil Jon comes on and somebody, usually Tammy, starts quoting Chapelle's Show. Somebody else, usually Jenny, starts complaining that Chapelle's Show went out of style years ago. Jenny and Tammy argue about how funny shouting 'hey!' and 'all right!' for no reason is until Mary just changes the station to Kiss FM. They play crap like Beyonce, Avril Lavigne, Britney Spe-"

"They should ban Britney from the radio," interrupts the brown haired girl named Jenny in a haughty tone, "That slut is _so_ 2001."

"But I like Britney..." the red haired girl in the so-called 'shotgun' seat says in a defeatist tone.

"And you two argue for a while about that," responds the blonde, "At least Mary has an opinion that isn't spoon-fed by MTV. It might be the _wrong_ opinion, but better than MTV. Like they can even call themselves Music Television with nothing but reality shows. After Britney, Black Eyed Peas will come on and I'll want to smash the radio with my double mocha latte. God, I _hate_ them."

"But they're the number one band!" Jenny comments with sheepish glee, once again earning the ire of the blonde.

"Have you ever _listened_ to them?" the blonde continues, "They're _awful_. Just _terrible_. I can't believe anyone buys that _rubbish_. You argue with me about them selling a lot of records and how I'm supposed to like them because of that. I tell you rubbish is still rubbish and we argue for half the song. Mary asks us to stop arguing and says she'll change the radio station to something, anything else to get that _awful_ band off. She randomly spins the dial and always ends up on The Drive or Jack FM. We listen to that for two minutes until somebody, usually Jenny, complains. 'I hate Laura Branigan! She _sucks_! Change the station!' On and on it goes."

"Maybe if we listened to _good_ music," the black haired girl determined as Tammy by process of elimination, "We wouldn't have this problem."

"But you listen to rap..." Mary comments, glancing away.

"Well, it's _my_ car," the blonde declares over the beginnings of Tammy's retort, "And in _my_ car, _I_ get to listen to _my_ music and right now, we are listening to **_nothing_** so _nobody will complain_. _**END. OF. STORY!**_"

Silence casts its shadow over them as they kind of glance at each other, the topic of little genuine importance. Each look conflicted about something, but to say what is anybody's guess. They have their reactions, from rage to indignation to depression. Funny to find any range amongst a group that prides itself on its lack of differentiation, but when all outward traits are robbed, inward ones become key. Mary seems to be cradling her right hand, rubbing her knuckles from some type of compulsion. An action not unnoticed by the blonde.

"Oh, it can't _possibly_ still hurt," the blonde comments, "Seriously, punch a bag every once in a while. You don't have to be a boxer to throw a punch."

"Can we just get on with it?" Tammy demands, irritated, "We've been sitting here forever."

"Okay, fine," the blonde concedes, opening the door and sliding out with catlike grace. Everybody else follows suit, the teenage cadre gathering by the boot. Even if it wasn't purely a key fob action with no handle to mar BMW's Sheer Driving Pleasure®, the passengers are all smart enough to leave this for the alpha girl. The contents of this boot are something special, after all. The blonde presses a button on her remote that pops open the boot, revealing some male in his mid teens in a cramped fetal position. Bloody, bruised, and bare, there's a mixture of fear and indignation on his face.

"Hey!" the blonde shouts, "Get up!"

"Wha-" the boy attempts, cut short by a hard punch from the blonde to a gash on his belly. He gives a short yelp, gritting his teeth as he tries to overcome the excruciating pain. A girl in a flowing black dress stands with her back against a nearby tree, watching with vague interest.

"I didn't say _talk_," the blonde barks, grabbing hold of his bloody shoulder and squeezing with her fingers digging in. The boy continues to do his best not to give in to the pain. After a good twenty seconds of squeezing harder and harder, the blonde gives an irritated sigh and hoists the boy by his arm right out of the car. The girl in black starts to walk over as the blonde drags him away a little and drops him face first onto the pavement. He tries to make a run for it, but a couple kicks from everybody except Mary keep him pinned face first on the ground.

"You won't get away with this!" the boy yelps out through a couple kicks and stomps. With that, the blonde makes some hand motion that stops her followers in their place. She walks over to his head and kneels down for a closer look, a smug expression on her face. An action mirrored by the girl in black, but with passive disinterest. More of a clinical look than anything else.

"I don't need to tell you I already have," the blonde says, doing her best artificial chuckle, "But tell me: what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to tell the police," the boy says, not even convinced in himself. Something that the blonde may or may not have picked up, but she won't let that get in the way of her righteous screed.

"With what proof?" the blonde asks, "We're bleaching the car when we get back to town and taking it in for detailing this morning. It will be like nothing happened by the afternoon. Everything else from the knife to the chair will be gone by then, too. There will be nothing you can show. It will be your story against mine and you know who will win."

"I'll tell everybody what happened," the boy states, "The press, the internet, Michael Moor-"

"Oh, sure," the girl interrupts with a genuine chuckle, "Go to the fat white guy who hides behind the first amendment to lie and defame anybody not fulfilling his agenda. With his huge political power given by making liberal documentaries and writing poorly sourced books, he'll surely get me convicted with no evidence at all. Why, he did single-handedly overthrow Bush from office in 2004 with _Fahrenheit 9/11_, didn't he?"

"...but..." the boy breathes in defeat, unable or unwilling to think of a rebuttal. The blonde gives a slight chuckle while ignoring the confused stares of her friends as she grabs the boy's jaw and holds his head up to face her.

"_Nobody_ is going to believe you," the blonde finishes, rubbing her cheek against his and dropping his head back into the gravel. She stands up and gives him a kick in the kidney as she walks by, the girl in black quietly backing out of the way. Tammy and Jenny take their kicks as they pass, Mary still declining to partake in the violence. She doesn't seem too pleased with this turn of events, but she's still tagging along anyway for whatever reason. As they file in, the blonde starts fiddling with the radio as she starts the automatic top lowering device. There certainly is room in the boot for it now.

"_My_ car, _my_ music," the blonde declares with a certain finality, starting up the car with a push of the gas pedal. As the car settles back down, a hard rock song comes in through the speakers at full blast.

_Woah, yeah!  
Kickstart my heart,__  
Give it a start.  
Woah, yeah, bayyyyy-beee!_

The other girls give the blonde a doubtful look as she pops the car in gear and zooms off as fast as possible, the chorus not getting a chance to repeat before fading off into the distance. There lies the teenage boy, so thoroughly destroyed in mind and spirit. Sure, his body will recover just fine given a few days and some antibiotics, but the things he has witnessed will never wash off. A lifetime of psychological counseling awaits him in the future. He just continues lying there, perhaps hoping that a car will run him over and end his miserable existence. A wish this incoming car doesn't seem willing to fulfill. A Ford something or other, with a middle-aged man as its driver. Such is fate that anybody would be here so soon.

"Need a ride?" asks the man in a familiar tone. The boy just continues to lie there, perhaps hoping that maybe he'll be forgotten if he just keeps still. A ruse for which the driver does not fall. He grabs a black wool trenchcoat from the passenger seat and slides out of the sedan, walking over to the boy. His preparation seems just a little suspicious, but fortuitous, nonetheless. He unfolds it and drapes it over the boy's back, careful not to touch him in any way.

"...do you always carry that with you?" the boy finally asks after a few minutes. Not an entirely invalid question, but not one that would be expected from such a victim.

"Just tonight," the man responds in a slightly guilty tone. Not something the boy seems to pick up. After a minute or so, the man gives a soft sigh.

"Are you just going to lie there all night?" the man asks.

"I don't know," the boy murmurs, burrowing his head a little into the pavement. It's almost like he has declared the road his bed. Considering how many taxpayer dollars are dumped into this pathway next to nobody uses, it's probably good enough for sleeping.

"Do you need help getting up?" the man offers, "I'm not legally allowed to touch you until you give consent. Don't want to lose my teaching license, after all."

"...yeah," the boy says, holding up his uninjured arm. The man hoists the boy up, looking away lest he offend either of their sensibilities. The teen doubles over in pain as he grasps a deep cut on his stomach, blood pouring out at a steady rate. The man doesn't look, but the gravity and the soft yelp of pain are all he needs.

"Something wrong?" the man asks, "May I look?"

"Hang on," the boy says, slipping the trenchcoat on properly, "Okay, sure."

"Now that's a nasty cut," the man comments as he glances over the partially exposed form, "Good thing I brought a first aid kit."

The man helps the boy walk over to the car, assisting him onto a plastic covered seat. The whole car short of the driver's wheel and a power outlet is covered with thick plastic sheets of the type used for painting houses, crinkling at even the slightest touch. In the back is a whole bunch of advanced camera equipment, complete with night lens, a long range directional microphone, and a tape deck hooked up to a laptop running some video editing software. The sort of thing one would expect to see in some nutjob conspiracy theorist's car. The man takes a medical kit out from under his seat and opens it, the girl in black wandering over casually.

"You know," the man starts, spreading some clear gel on some gauze, "I never figured Miss Billett would be into 80s hair metal or so zealous about it. I'm surprised the others accept her as their leader."

"...wait, you heard that?" the boy asks, the implications of the video equipment only just now hitting him, "How long have you been following me?"

"Since after you left the school," the man admits.

"And you did _**NOTHING**_ to stop this?!" the boy shouts, holding back a yelp of pain as he grabs his cut

"I called the police when they took you into that derelict building," the man explains, "They said they'd dispatch someone over right away. I don't think any car was sent out, though. Not unless 26 minutes and some change is considered a reasonable response time to kidnapping and battery. I got it all on tape, though."

"Why didn't you _**help me?!**_" the boy shouts, shaking with rage. Funny how pain tolerance goes through the roof with anger.

"This antiseptic is kind of painful, so I'll let you wipe it on," the man says with false obliviousness, gently placing the rag on a part of the boy's leg covered by the trenchcoat.

"_**WHY?!**_" the boy shouts again.

"I heard you the first time," the man starts, "Think for a minute. You were kidnapped by four athletic people and taken to the middle of nowhere. They were filled with indignation and rage, fully aware they could probably get away with just about anything, and had already crossed the threshold into felony instead of petty misdemeanors. I might be ex-military, but I would have been outnumbered and over twice their age. Not to mention one of them had a knife. I'm not a superman, after all."

The boy gradually simmers down as he finds himself at a loss for words. What can he really say to that? Apparently, nothing. The boy eventually grits his teeth and rubs the gauze on his gash, the girl in black tilting her head to his agonized scream. After the boy finally lets up, the man puts on some latex gloves and pulls out a suture kit. It only takes a couple stitches and a large bandage to get the bleeding under control.

"You know..." the man muses, "I think we're holding this year's top news story. The stuff of legends captured on video and all we have to do is blow it open. There is not a single news source that won't carry this. You can write your own copy to drive the story in and the name recognition alone will get you a job. Hunter S. Thompson would be proud."

"Who the hell is that?" the boy asks, squinting his eyes in confusion.

"Your second published news story should be about the weakness of your journalism classes," the man sighs, "Gonzo Journalism. Look it up. Anyway, before we go to the police, we have a couple things to handle. We need to get copies of these videos produced and distributed. We have to assume the police are on the payroll if they ignored that call and might try to confiscate these materials. However, we have to hurry; we need to get that car impounded before it's taken in for 'detailing'."

A loud plastic clatter interrupts the conversation, slightly startling the boy without so much as a flinch from the man. Turning to look back, he takes out the tape and slaps in one from the nearby camera. Another button press starts rewinding the tape as he types in some information into the computer. Here's someone that expects the worst and won't leave anything to chance. Get it digitalized, make a whole bunch of copies on easy to hide miniSD cards, entrust them with friends working for the press, and then go to the potentially corrupt police department. No cover up is going to happen here come hell or high water.

"Okay, let's get started," the man says, shifting the car into gear and starting to drive off. The girl in black doesn't even flinch as the car rolls by.

"...how are you ex-military when..." the boy's voice travels off as the car fades from sight. The girl strolls over to the blood stains, eyeing it as though something might happen through sheer force of will alone.

"Good old Dana Billett," the girl in black says impassively, "Lord and mistress of the Hometown High School. The princess of popularity, enforcer of conformity, bane of the geeks and freaks. One wouldn't expect such a figure to hold such off-beat, outspoken, and opinionated views about popular music, but it just goes to show how dangerous she is. Any idiot can learn to watch MTV or whatever for their opinions. Any idiot can follow the trends. Any idiot can enforce the trends under pain of ridicule and social isolation. Any idiot can rise to the top of the hierarchy. And year after year, graduation after graduation, any idiot does."

"But she's not just any idiot," the girl comments, running her fingers over the blood, "Any idiot would hide their opinion. Any idiot would banish it from their mind and drown it out with some recycled prefab from Rihanna. She doesn't have to. She doesn't care about the trends. She just enforces them for the sake of thrusting conformity and submissiveness upon her subjects. Decree that last month's satin skirt is out in favor of this month's silk skirt so she can tear down the weak and cast them into the dreaded ranks of the geeks. Once that purge is complete, it shall be the lace skirt that you must own. Funny how the popular kids become more powerful the thinner their ranks and the larger the divide."

"And yet," the girl continues, "She goes blatantly against these trends amongst her so-called friends. Why? After all, they're her trusted lieutenants on this war against individuality. A leader that doesn't even follow their philosophy. You know why? Fear. She might have everybody else fooled into thinking she's the prophet of the hottest trends, but those closest aren't so stupid. They want her position and being such close 'friends', they would eventually find a way to tear her down. Find an old picture of her when she wasn't so pretty, print fliers, and declare her unfit for popularity. Cast her down into the ranks of the untouchables and take her place as the new arbiter of opinion."

The girl stands up and starts walking over to her tree of origin, not bothering to take notice of the car that missed her by mere centimeters. A mutual outlook with that of the driver, apparently.

"Unlike just any idiot," the girl continues, "She realized this. She realized the position is as fleeting as the trends she enforces. She realized that prophets never last. Even Moses got discredited in the end. She realized that any image of trendiness can be torn down by those bold enough. So what does she do? She cultivates an image of fear. They hear of would-be revolutionaries being torn down, beat up, humiliated. Anyone who might pose a threat is destroyed by the full capacity of a high school student. It is through some Orwellian doublethink that she can remain both admired and feared at the same time. Rumors of her violent outbursts will be treated as such; laughable pieces of gossip both parties know to be false. They know it isn't, but at the same time, they know it is. 'Just another rumor'."

"As for her inner circle," the girl continues, leaning back against the tree, "She needs them to see her unfit, but follow her anyway. Invite them to destroy her with the realization that if they so much as even step out of line, they will be part of the new rumors circulating around and three more naïve people will be sitting at her table. For all we know, she doesn't really even like Mötley Crüe. But why even have an inner circle like this? There is no prestige like revealing the highest of the high as an outcast in disguise and through their twisted sense of unity, they can crush the geeks under their iron heels. No tyrant is complete without their council of advisers and its revolving door."

"And yet," the girl muses, "I am just repeating myself over and over. Maybe I should talk about Jason Vance, but I feel no pathos for him. He is what he is: a wannabe whistle blower that doesn't even know the icons or history of journalism. Pathetic. A lesser talent such as himself will only flounder even with a story like this to break him out. He will not direct his rage, his indignity, his total hatred of the world in any direction useful or respectable. If there's a chance Dana can escape this crime, it lies in Jason's strong willed but feeble minded screeds and his history in distorting the truth."

The girl quietly contemplates for a while as she tilts her head upwards to the sky, a look of expectation on her face. There is something incorporeal out there that seemingly only she can see. One might notice something quite unusual about her outfit: it does not move on its own. A nice autumn breeze is gently rustling the trees without so much as even a ripple on her loose sleeves. Even gravity seems to ignore itself when around her.

"Come on..." the girl eventually nags after a little, "I know you're there. Come out and play."

Another break.

"Mike is right," the girl starts, "Mötley Crüe is an interesting choice. Very 80s, very hard rock, very much against the hip-hop embraced by today's mindless youth. Any idiot following the trends would have every right to mock someone for liking them. They wear tight leather outfits with gigantic hair pumped with two gallons of gel, pepper their songs with 'yeah' and 'baby' like a bad fantasy novel does with 'destiny', and commit the greatest cardinal sin of all: they are old. But you know what they have that today's acts don't? Majesty. Dana's crony calls them 'hair metal' like it's a bad thing, but they're so much more than that. 'Metal' is a misnomer when you try to apply it to acts like Poison, but it fits the Crüe like a glove. They never went limp. They never 'sold out'. They started hard and stayed hard. That makes them so much more than the grunge acts that destroyed their genre would have you believe."

"Which is not to say they don't have their place," the girl continues in an obligatory manner, "I like grunge. Old school grunge, not the preppy crap like Creed, Puddle of Mudd, and Nickelback. I'm talking Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots. They each have a majesty all their own."

The girl takes a deep breath and readies her best atonal singing voice. Something technically correct on a note for note scale, but with so little feeling as to sound unnatural.

_Into the flood again,  
Same old trip it was back then_

_Oh I~, ohhhhhh, I'm still aliveee,  
Yeaeaeah, I~, ohhhhhh, I'm still alive_

_I am, I am, I am,  
I said I wanna get next to you_

"Legendary," the girl remarks with a certain reserved glee, "I'm surprised you don't like any of these albums. They're not that different from Queens of the Stone Age if you think about it. Even _Nevermind_ is majestic. I know you don't like Nirvana, but when 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' first came on, it destroyed a whole decade of crap. Even if you don't like it, you have to give it credit for that. Maybe the other songs are kind of boring, but 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' carried it to legend all by itself."

The girl continues to stand at her tree and look around impatiently. What she can really expect on such a remote stretch of road in the middle of nowhere is anyone's guess. She starts humming some sorrowful tune for as much discernible reason as any of her other actions. Something remote and distant, yet heartfelt. A distant memory recalled.

"Not quite lucid yet, huh?" the girl comments, "You know what bothers me about this universe? It's not the Heartless. It's not the lack of concrete physics. It's not the completely random and uncontrollable magic that taints people not even old enough to vote. It's not the fact that it has completely arbitrary prophecies sprout out of nowhere. It's not the completely random celestial transfer system that dumps people in with skills they do not deserve. It's not the fact that the keyblade chooses some wimpy fourteen year old kid as its master generation after generation. It's not the fact that this universe is so fragile that anyone who can get to the so-called Kingdom Hearts can royally screw everything up. It's not even the fact that everybody speaks the same language. You know what it is?"

"It's the fact that it's all of this," the girl states, "At once. And that is just scratching the surface. There is no order. Only chaos. An infinite number of people on an infinite number of worlds means everything, no matter how infinitesimal, will happen. Organization XIII was but one of an infinite number of Nobody groups trying to get their emotions back. Sure, you have to go really, really far to find the next one, but they're out there. Probably about a thousand galaxy clusters away, but remember: infinity."

"And yet," the girl continues, still no real emotion guiding her voice, "Why is it all the same? Why does everyone speak the same language, but not always write in it? Why does everyone use the same Earth 24 hour clock with the same 365 day years no matter how long their days or years? Why does everyone use the same names for their days, but different names for the months? Why do some planets have 12 month schedules, some 4 months, some 46 months, but always 365 days spread amongst them? It makes no sense. It can't be explained by English speaking parallel universe travelers influencing people. They'd make them adopt the text and month names. You know what else bugs me? Everybody knows what time and day it is, but nobody knows what year it is. Everybody talks about 'X years since the first war' or 'Y years since Organization XIII got mercilessly destroyed by Sora', but nobody can just say 'in the year 2525'."

"And the species," the girl continues, "What is up with that? Really. You have some token alien things like the Feylinus, the Birds, the... whatever the hell Mickey and company are, but they are the exception. Everything else is human, human, human. Their only real difference is ethnicity. Neverland is undeniably British while at the same time not, Agrabah is Persian while at the same time not, Land of Dragons is Chinese while at the same time not. How did they all end up that way? Why did they all end up that way?"

The girl comes ever so close to showing something of an overt emotion, but she catches herself and calms down. She makes another glance around, more upwards than downwards. What is she looking for?

"Even history itself is twisted," the girl continues, "Every year, something epic happens. Heroes and villains alike rise and fall, prophecies binding both into seemingly unalterable courses of conflict. You dare not fight fate lest you bring about its worst possible outcome. If you're prophesied to bring about your loved one's death, you're better off just shooting them. You could put them under close guard on a planet as far from danger as possible and the newborn sun would just go nova out of the blue. Fate will find its way in all but literally impossible circumstances. I should know: I have borne witness to 36,196 years of history."

The girl gives a sigh as she nods her head down with her eyes closed.

"I'm just going to keep talking until you come out," the girl declares, "You're right to not tell anyone your true name. Your enemies might beat you, stomp you, stab you, but so long as they do not have your name, they cannot destroy you. I have so many names, but they are all terrible. Come on... lady of sorrows? What am I, the Virgin Mary? Seriously, no thanks. Maybe you should suggest I be called Anna Molly."

The girl chuckles with little genuine emotion, as though something about her words were supposed to imply a joke that nobody else is meant to get.

"You know," the girl continues, "After the Incubus song about some girl that may or may not exist... just like an anomaly... yeah, I'm not that clever. Sod it. Wake up."


	59. Action Packed!

Kiko wakes up once again, her thoughts all over the map. What does the girl in black want from her, anyway? What does she expect? What is there about unempowered, unexceptional Kiko that she finds so fascinating? She knows full well that she is nothing more than a glorified sidekick to people much more powerful, important, and likable than her. And how much worse can life back in her old world really get? Dana and company are apparently able to get away with kidnapping, assault, torture, and other such activities while the police willingly choose to do nothing? At least there's an overwhelming amount of video evidence coming to smash them like a freight train.

And yet, she banishes these stray thoughts from her mind as she focuses on the objective. The pink alien was adamant that she come along, so here she is. In a not-so-comfortable seat on a not-so-glamorous space ship, heading over to glamorous Neverland. She glances around to find everybody awake and walking about. Riku is doing some stretches while Sora and Uina are applying some heavy make-up on Chou's face. She's barely even recognizable with what they've done to her. Her sepia tone dress not only hides her cape-like tissue, but also fills her form and gives an illusion of budding breasts. A brown wig adorns her head, two looped braids falling down to the small of the back. All that's needed are a pair of contacts and some mold to fill in the human elements and make her look presentable as a girl in her tweens. A job well done.

"Welcome back, Kiko," Uina comments without bothering to glance away from Chou's face, "Have a good sleep?"

"I guess..." Kiko responds, a little confused, "Why didn't you wake me?"

"I tried about half an hour ago," Uina responds, "You just mumbled something and turned away. I was going to douse you in cold water after I got Chou set up, but I guess that won't be necessary. A shame. You should go gear up and get dressed. Your disguise is on the table; just put it on over your current stuff."

"Okay..." Kiko says, unbuckling herself and hopping out of her chair. She instinctively performs a full upper body stretch as she walks through the door, emerging within the combination laboratory and equipment storage room. True to Uina's word, a gigantic blue period dress is lying on his work table, its skirt utterly massive compared to its full sleeved bodice. Poofy and shiny, it's the sort of thing nine year old girls fantasize and fifteen year old girls scoff. The antithesis of Kiko, but if it's necessary, so be it. She picks it up, discovering a blonde wig wearing a bonnet and a sticky note inside.

Dear Kiko,

Please return the wand when we get back. Delivery box. No discussion necessary, no blame assigned, nobody else involved.

Best wishes on your mission,  
Professor Uina

Well, it was perhaps inevitable he'd notice it sooner or later. Three months to discover it's a useless trinket in her hands is good enough for her. She puts the stuff back down, crumpling the note and tossing it in a nearby bin as she walks over to the bathroom. A quick in and out just like the doctrine states.

Afterwards, she wanders over to the racks for some shopping. She already has her knives, so she just needs to get her primary set. The MP5 submachinegun wasn't really that good in retrospect. More of a large pistol than anything else, but without the same maneuverability or portability. Rapid fire, but it was just pissing in the wind after the third shot. She'll just go with a pair of the long barrel semi-automatics with waist holsters. Combined with the laser sights and scopes, they look like they can pick off a target a good two hundred meters away. More than enough for narrow caves.

Kiko starts looking around for the bandoliers when she notices something impressive in its own caged locker. It appears to be a large boxy gun of some kind, made of a brass and black steel alloy in an impressively ugly clash of color. Three times longer than it is wide or tall, the edges only just barely rounded. A pair of pistons and tubes adorn what appears to be the bottom, the clip attached to its back parallel to the barrel. And yet, the weird part is how it is apparently held. Its top has what appears to be some kind of looped strap on the back and an upwards vertical grip on the front, with two thumb buttons forming a diamond and one index trigger. Just barely visible to Kiko is a tag on a string looped around the back brace.

Twilight's Javelin v0.91, Revision 4

Now this is the weapon for her. Something with an impressive sounding name, a heavy payload, and the design to be held single armed. Screw the Vulcan; she wants this thing. It is her ticket to the big time, the key to destroying the most dire foe. Alas, it's just out of her reach. Maybe she can ask about it, but she's not going to hold her hopes up. It would certainly be hard to smuggle it even in that humongous dress, so pinching it is out of the question. Kiko sighs, grabs a bandolier, and fills it up with red band clips, ignoring the white and black magazines. Aligning one's ammunition to one side or the other just invites issues like that last trip. Explosive tipped rounds beat everything.

With her gear set, Kiko performs a contortionist act to get the forty pound dress on. She can barely even move her arms in this thing, but it does certainly cover her entire uniform. Just what it is designed for, apparently. She adorns the wig and bonnet, adjusting it a little as she walks back towards the cockpit. A waste basket slams over as she pases by... this is going to take some practice. With a little effort, she gets through the door to find Sora and Riku slipping on these elaborate brown business suits. The sort of thing one would imagine on Sherlock Holmes or H.G. Wells. Chou is fully outfitted, shifting uncomfortably as she takes short breaths with her mouth. She actually manages to look even less human with the outfit, but at least nobody should be paying too close attention without bright pink acting like a flare.

"Looking good!" Sora says with an enthusiastic thumbs up in some nonspecific direction. Uina finishes something on his laptop and walks over, a low rumble going through the ship.

"Do you have both a primary and secondary weapon?" Uina asks in a sort of condescending voice.

"Yes," Kiko starts, "What is 'Twilight's Javelin', anyway?"

"Something you're not going to use," Uina utters with dismissal, "Anyway, we'll be arriving at the bicycle path in two minutes. Positions, everybody."

Before Kiko can voice any protest, she finds herself caught up in the crowd of three heading towards the back. Whatever. It's probably too early to use, anyway. Not even version 1.0. She follows behind, another trash bin slamming over from the skirt. Perhaps things will improve when they're out in the open. She takes up a position next to Riku in the line up, Uina walking in with a briefcase by his side.

"Okay, then," Uina starts, "Same crew, different mission. Funny how this setup worked out. Anyway, just like I promised, I got us a G3 Long Range Conversion dropped in just outside city visibility. It has a mountain camouflage pattern, but that's about where the stealth ends. Don't be careless. Anyway, Sora is the taskmaster for this mission. He knows where you're going and how to get there. Chou, we're proud of you and know you will do wonderfully."

"Thank you," Chou says half-hearted with a downer expression.

"Kiko," Uina says with a pensive glance, "Tourist. Live it. Love it. Your medical bill is high enough as it is. Anyway, it looks like the coast is just about clear. Sora, you look the most respectable. You carry the case."

"Sure thing," Sora responds, taking the briefcase from Uina.

"Let's get this show on the road," Uina says, the floor sinking just like last time. Kiko follows everybody else as they duck out and jump less than a meter onto some patch of grass, forest all around and a dirt road not too far. The sun is shining brightly, hanging about halfway in the partially cloudy sky. Beautiful weather, the temperature only just a little nippy. A man on a bulbous old-fashioned bicycle approaches, tipping his hat to the group.

"Top of the morning to you, sirs and madams," greets the man as he passes by. Sora and Riku both tip their hats in return, waiting until the man fades from sight before turning to face Kiko and Chou.

"Okay, everyone," Sora starts, "I think Uina's being a bit paranoid with this plan, but here goes. We're going to start by going through London to the House of Lords at Westminster. Once there, we'll enter the canals through the basement and make our way out to the ocean. Our ride is waiting for us there. Any questions?"

"Not really," Riku quickly answers.

"Let's get started," Sora announces, overriding Kiko's attempt to say something. She decides it's probably not that important, anyway. The bicycle path is simply stunning, glistening dew on the leaves giving off prismatic fragments of light. One suspects it might be a result of the magic, but it is just one of many things wondrous about this world. There's a calmness of being that seems to pervade the environment and soak through the very skin, giving rise to thoughts of empowerment. Kiko feels like she can do anything here if she put her mind to it. Still, she just thought of a question worthy of Sora and she may as well ask it now while the coast is still clear.

"Hey, Sora," Kiko says in a bid for attention.

"Yes, Kiko?" Sora responds dutifully.

"Is it true you can fly here?" Kiko asks, not mincing any words. Sora starts casually gliding about half a meter off the ground, slowly spinning in place as he continues forward. Well, that answers that question, but now the other part.

"How do you do that?" Chou asks, beating Kiko to the punch. Probably better that way.

"I don't know how to describe," Sora explains as he lands back on the ground and continues his stride unbroken, "You sort of have to feel and flow with it. Let it envelop you, consume you, speak to you, guide you, and only then will it yield to you. It might seem like regular magic, but it doesn't feel like it. Feels more like the will of another being than your own inner self."

"Oh," Chou responds, apparently not too interested. It's probably because she has magic... mitochondria manipulation... whatever. If it really is something biological, how do they travel from planet to planet? There's no way evolution produced a way to open portals or something without magic being involved. They certainly don't seem like a technological species, after all. Kiko realizes another reason to find concern in Chou: mitochondria plays a large role in _Parasite Eve_. She never played the games, but she saw the trailers and they were about people mutating into monsters because of mitochondria or something. Chou is never touching her again if she can help it.

The path eventually emerges into the outskirts of what she assumes to be London. It certainly is a striking view, hard to quantify in words. Big Ben looms in the distance, surrounded by brick flats as far as the eye can see. Horse-drawn carriages shuttle people through the cobblestone streets, not a single block short of a dozen lamp posts. Everything is surprisingly clean; a trait unlike the real world counterpart. Posters of a vintage typography litter the walls, advertising everything from stage performances to wanted criminals. Victorian to the last. Sora turns to face the group, doing a casual scan just as discussed in Tactical Awareness. Nice to see those hundreds of millions of munny at work.

"Okay," Sora starts, "Two rules: no weapons, no magic. Neither are allowed in public areas and we certainly don't want the police on us. Watch for followers, but do not turn your head. If we don't look out of place, they might leave on their own. There are reflections everywhere: use them. Bring up the weather if you notice anyone that seems like they're after us. Stay close, don't make eye contact, and we'll be fine. Let's go."

And it's off into the heart of London they go. Perhaps that guy on the bicycle was a little unusual because nobody else is greeting them. People in dark suits and gaudy gowns just continue their every day meandering without so much as a wave to anyone else. Sure, the newsboys and bootblacks are more than enthusiastic to peddle their services, but that's just a given. The only proof that people are even aware of their existence is the occasional doubtful glance cast upon Chou. The kind that just screams of awareness, but a lack of conviction to act upon it. One wonders if they even have the imagination capable of comprehending a pink alien.

Each glance brings even more awareness just how off-putting Chou has become. Her eyes kind of laze about from place to place without rhyme or reason and there's this tiny glimmer of pink beneath the brown lens. She keeps favoring the left foot more than the right, her arms don't swing smoothly, and she takes these short breaths through her mouth with an unusual kind of exasperation. All things that don't seem like anything but alien quirks have become the most distracting things in the world when attempting to paint her as human. Kiko wants to look away, but she just can't. It has burnt itself into her mind and nothing short of Chou's exposure will fix this mental image.

One particular bystander's stare seems more potent than the rest. Some young woman in her late twenties, svelte and sturdy, gives this long and ardent gaze as she walks by. There's something just a little out of place about her. Maybe it's the walk, the make up, the atypical fashion. Something bothersome. Kiko checks the nearby windows, noticing her sudden about face behind a couple. An obvious attempt to start trailing with at least some level of awareness. Very suspicious, indeed.

"The weather i-" Chou attempts.

"Lovely weath-" Riku also attempts.

"Nice day..." Sora inadvertently overrides, trailing off as he gives this thoughtful look. Seems to reaffirm that Kiko isn't any more gifted than anybody else present. Oh, well. Sora starts walking about half a step per pace faster, everybody else falling behind and requiring a couple long strides to catch back up. Not exactly inconspicuous, but it does seem to prove their suspicions correct. The chase is on.

Sora leads the group from street to street, taking unnecessary detours and jaywalking at random intervals. The follower shows at least some level of discreetness by circling alleys and waiting for crosswalks, but she is unambiguously after them. Kiko wonders if it would just be better to continue until near some police and let her catch up, but if she's on Maleficent's side, she's probably armed and extremely dangerous. Better to just keep going. Westminster is in sight now, Big Ben looming overhead. Already, those distinctive four note chimes ring out to all as the time jerks to 11:00. Funny how the times of day seems to coincide across planets.

The group continues to follow Sora as he leads past two distinctive guards with bayonet adorned rifles into the front courtyard. The place seems pretty barren, making their stalker so completely obvious as she walks past the gate a good hundred meters behind them. Entering the building reveals a distant chatter and an away sign on the front desk. Parliament is probably in session now. No wonder nobody is out and about.

"How do you want to do this?" Riku asks.

"Let her see us turn the corner," Sora explains, "Riku, do your door trick right after. Let's move."

Everybody strides towards the parliament lobby with conviction, turning the corner just as the front door swings back open. Security sure is lax for being the seat of power. There must be something else to it not obvious to even the trained but unexpecting eye. Kiko gasps as she suddenly finds herself falling, landing with a thud and barely keeping her balance. Chou isn't so lucky, tripping over and falling right out of her wig. Sora and Riku must have known what was going to happen because they land with perfect catlike grace.

"What just happened?" Kiko asks, looking around the unfamiliar room. Seems like storage or something, with boxes all over.

"I opened a portal," Riku explains, helping Chou back onto her feet and into her wig, "Didn't link it to any realm, so it creates a short hole where you use it."

"I thought you couldn't open portals any more..." Kiko bemuses, still clinging to game canon as at least something of a framework.

"Eh," Riku shrugs, holding two fingers to his temple with head nodded and eyes closed, "You're talking about The World That Never Was, aren't you? It was infested top to bottom with Heartless. I don't think there was a worse time and place to enter the Realm of Darkness."

"Makes sense," Kiko remarks. Sora lightly turns Riku by his shoulder, facing him towards some blank wall. Cloudy dark purple energy of some kind gathers around Riku's hand, dispersing towards the wall as he extends his arm outwards. It forms a circle and dissolves into the structure, the saturated areas fading away to reveal some type of water filled passageway. It has this arch to its ceiling, bricks on either side covered with mold and walkways barely wide enough to use. For what is essentially a sewer, it's remarkably clean. Maybe the magic has something to do with it?

The group walks through the non-portal, the wall fading back into existence behind them. Darkness fills Kiko's eyes, confusing for only the briefest moment. Expecting a light source down here is a bit unrealistic, after all. A blue light forms very close nearby, casting its light all around. Is there anything the keyblade can't do?

"Okay," Sora starts, "We have a very long walk ahead of us. Stay close and call out if you fall in the water."

Kiko tries to get over to Riku, but such thin walkways and Chou in the way makes that an impossibility. She'll just have to save the talk for the ride. The cramped canals, thin and dark beyond the eye-straining blue light, start to weigh heavily on Kiko's mind with each hour. Is it really so necessary to go through here? The stalker is probably still inside Westminster causing an intergalactic incident. Corridor after corridor, narrow bridge after narrow bridge, not a single bit of variation. How can anyone keep their sanity in a place like this? Kiko almost starts feeling the walls closing in and air getting thin. Claustrophobia must beat boredom, apparently.

Mercifully, some natural light starts pouring in around this next corner. Is it the exit? Why, yes, it is. Kiko breathes a sigh of relief upon the sight of the drain, water flowing out into the nearby ocean. Seems a little eco-unfriendly considering the lack of anything resembling a treatment plant, but hey: everything's clean here. Sora leads the group out and around the drain, climbing a couple meters up a cliff face. Perhaps it would be too easy if the drain came out on level ground. Regardless, everybody is now far out in the wilderness, grassy plateaus as far as the eye can see. London isn't even a speck in the distance. How far did they walk?

"Okay..." Sora says, desummoning his keyblade and fiddling with the briefcase, "Those were the most boring four hours of my life, but we're here. Any questions?"

"Can't you do a regular light?" Kiko asks, thinking back on her past experience. He used it back in that warehouse on Amaterasu. Why not here?

"You mean this?" Sora responds, summoning his keyblade and igniting a small fireball at its end for all of a second, "It's kind of a strain to do that for longer than a few minutes."

"Oh," Kiko says, unable to really think of anything else. Why were the sewers back on that other planet both much smaller and also properly lighted the whole way through? Then again, that place was much more technologically advanced and can probably afford the light strips and electricity to power them. This place seems like it's just barely distributing electricity to the wealthiest of areas. Oh, well. Maybe now that Sora is bothering with some type of computer thing inside the briefcase, Kiko can go bug Riku for a bit. There are too many things left unsaid that she must get through.

"Got it," Sora says just as Kiko begins to vocalize. Damn interruptions. Some rhythmic chirping emanates from a nearby trench, bright red lights flashing with each beep. Sora leads the group over, robbing Kiko of an opportunity to talk with Riku once again. At least they're going to be in some type of vehicle for a good while. Best possible time to bug him.

A trek down the gradual slope reveals some type of heavily armored treaded tank, shades of brown in splotches all over. It almost looks like some rolling bread box with weapons fused on. There's one gigantic cannon on top with a barrel half as long as the vehicle itself, one relatively small two piece, six barrel chaingun turret ahead and only just barely low enough to clear the main weapon, twin barrel large bore cannons in upper recesses of the front and back, and a pair of six barrel chaingun turrets on either side. So many guns all over, with barely enough space for safety lights. Kiko can't even tell where she's supposed to enter.

"We can just leave the clothes here," Sora announces, casually removing his overly elaborate suit to reveal his regular clothing right underneath. Everybody else follows his lead, leaving behind a couple expensive looking piles. Well, if Sora says it's okay, then by all means. There is certainly some relief for Kiko and it's not even so much because she's dumping the huge gown. It's because Chou now looks like a proper alien instead of some poor imitation of a human being. That was really starting to bother her.

"Are you sure I can drive this?" Riku asks, giving a doubtful look to his companion.

"Eh..." Sora shrugs, "How hard can it be? We're not going to battle with it, after all. Shall we?"

"Let's," Riku responds, walking towards the vehicle as Sora taps some buttons into the computer briefcase. A small, circular hatch pops up just behind the huge cannon, two rungs on its inside. Sora doesn't even bother with climbing either up or down, simply vaulting right inside. Riku could probably do the same, but he's more discreet and enters like a normal person. Kiko and Chou follow behind, the latter having a little difficulty getting up the side. Kiko drops inside, nearly banging her head against the low ceiling.

Cramped is an insufficient word to describe the interior. There's barely enough room for four seats in a diamond formation and a computer terminal at each one. The front set has three monitors angled towards the seat and some large four part steering system surrounded by tons of switches, buttons, and dials. The other three seats have single monitors, two joystick setups, and keyboards. Not nearly as involved as the main system. The rest of the cabin seems to be invaded by machinery feeding the guns and two racks on either side of the rear seat containing weapons and supplies. One could presumably live in here for days at the risk of cabin fever. Riku is already in the front seat complete with belt, staring blankly at the wall of controls in front of him.

"Which button makes this thing go?" Riku asks in a half-joking manner. Sora leans over from his seat to Riku's right, effortlessly flipping a whole bunch of switches and tapping in a combination on a keypad. All the electronics in the vehicle light up, diagnostics running at rapid speeds on every monitor. Things such as 'artificial intelligence checksum... ready' and 'EMP shielding... ready' seem to take longer than others, but it's otherwise just an unreadable string of symbols. During this time, Kiko manages to get the seat to Riku's left. Seatbelt on for safety. There might be about a meter of sideways distance, but not enough to be too big a deal. Chou should be sitting down in the rearmost seat, but she's standing over by Sora for some reason.

"Are you ready?" Chou asks, staring deep into Sora's eyes.

"As ready as I'll ever be," Sora says with a shy reluctance. Chou reaches into her mouth with her right index and middle finger, scraping the inside of her cheek. She takes out what appears to be some bright pink fleshy stuff, gently opening Sora's mouth with her other hand and rubbing the icky looking stuff inside. Almost immediately, Sora goes a little wobbly in the head, his eyes flitting about at random.

"I'm gonna... I'm gonna lie down now," Sora murmurs in weak stupor as he nods his head to a side with eyes closed, "Okay, see ya."

To Kiko, this sight releases some untold level of joy. So Chou didn't really steal her first kiss. Sure, it was still an exchange of saliva and other stuff, but at least it wasn't a kiss. She can still maintain that perfect devotion to Riku in both body and spirit. Speaking of which, now is as good a time as any for Kiko to talk to Riku. Sora's out for the count and Chou is settling down for what appears to be a nap as well.

"Rik-" Kiko attempts.

"Not now," Riku interrupts, holding up his hand while he stares at the controls. After a final string of text, all the monitors change to outside displays, overlay hubs relating various amounts of information. As far as Kiko can tell, each seat gets a view of its side of the vehicle. Makes sense. How four people can control eight turrets is anyone's guess, but then again, it did mention something about artificial intelligence. Probably commandeer individual guns at a time and program others for auto-fire. Kiko now finds it hard to believe that any army with whole battalions of these could ever lose to the Heartless. Those so-called Rocs must be really badass.

"Please proceed to the highlighted route and the route guidance will start," says a droll female voice in an evenly spaced monotone, a tactical map popping up on the corner of Riku's middle screen. He pushes the top half of the steering control gently, a loud rumble and screech ringing from the left side as the vehicle lurches forward. Riku quickly withdraws his hands with an irritated look on his face, glancing over at Sora for a second.

"Dammit, Sora," Riku mumbles, analyzing the controls in greater detail. It takes him a little before he pulls just the top right side back a nudge. The screech quickly fades away as the vehicle spins just a little to the right. He breathes a sigh of relief as he carefully pushes both pieces as evenly as possible. The tank rolls out of the trench into the open field, a compass with an arrow appearing on the main display. Seems it wants to go about 93 kilometers that way. Riku revs up to a pretty fast clip, doing a couple practice swerves before settling down to a straight path. Now is the time.

"Um, Riku?" Kiko interjects.

"Yes?" Riku asks in that sort of annoyed tone of one interrupted from a very difficult task.

"About that date we went on..." Kiko trails off, hoping she can just let Riku do the explanation on his own.

"Now's not really a good time," Riku retorts, a bump violently jolting the cabin. 80 million munny and they can't even buy a good suspension system?

"I was just wondering..." Kiko starts, "Did you really want to go on that date with me?"

"What do you mean?" Riku asks with genuine, unfaked obliviousness.

"Well..." Kiko starts, thinking carefully, "I get the feeling King Mickey ordered you to take me out."

"Not sure how you figured _that _out, but yes," Riku explains, "Mickey... King Mickey did ask me to take you out. He wanted me to make you happy and get you to change your behavior. I didn't really think it was a very nice thing to do, though. That's why I wanted you to barter with me for a date. It would be your choice and I wouldn't have any say or blame in the matter. When you walked away from a free date all those times, I thought... maybe there is something to you after all? Not sure what it is, but you're not as shallow as I thought. You still bother me, but I don't know why any more."

"Feh..." Kiko breathes, defeated. She should have thought this out better before bringing it up. She really doesn't have anything to say to this. Nothing at all. May as well just shut up and try to take a nap. Before that, she really needs to get something to eat. She hasn't had anything since that lunch and her lack of focus has returned her sense of hunger. Seems there are military ration tins in one of the racks. Beans and dried pears. Yummy. Space ships with cloaking devices, berserk robot armies crowding a whole planet, and this is the best they can do for food?

"Pass me one of those, please," Riku asks, holding a hand behind him without looking over. Kiko obliges all too happily.

"Uina can build a tank like this, but can't have any good food in it..." Kiko bemuses.

"Uina doesn't build these things," Riku states flatly.

"...wait, I thought he built everything?" Kiko asks, now baffled by this revelation.

"These are from the..." Riku pauses, tilting his head a little, "...Guillermo Heavy Weapons Corporation. It's what the G stands for. I've never actually met Head Engineer Guillermo, but he's supposed to be a real genius. One of those people we'd be completely lost without... or something. King Mickey must have about a dozen people inventing and building stuff for him and he'll hire more if he thinks they have potential. Kind of funny the impression Ansem left on him."

"Fascinating," Kiko says, lying back and trying to go to sleep. For the first time in what feels like forever, she genuinely wishes somebody else was around to talk to. Sora and Chou are both out like lights, the former drooling this pink stuff from the corner of his mouth. Lovely. Why anyone would ever agree to something like that is anyone's guess. Kiko always kind of assumed Riku would be a great driver, but he keeps running over these completely avoidable ditches and such. Then again, Riku has mostly been indoctrinated as a mage and used the Corridors of Darkness for transit almost exclusively. That he can drive at all is something short of a miracle.

"Uina kind of bothers me, to be honest," Riku starts out of the blue, "I know why King Mickey keeps him around. He's smart, he's talented, he has this instinctive drive for invention. He just looks at stuff and can make it better practically overnight. He once called himself a technomage and I believe it. But I get this sort of... vibe from him, you know? Like he couldn't really give a crap about us."

"I see what you mean..." Kiko says, believing herself to know a lot more on the topic than Riku ever will. Not that she can ever blow the lid on this without probably going down as well.

"Remember when King Mickey asked him to get Chou?" Riku asks, this latest bump nearly banging his head on the low ceiling. That seat needs some repairs.

"Sort of," Kiko admits, "I wasn't really paying attention."

"He was kind of a jerk about it," Riku says, "He had no reason to be, either. The robot crowding on Malleus was at least a little his fault. He says he 'outsources' the programming, but he should have at least tested that thing somewhere else long before using it on the field. We didn't even really need it in the first place. Mickey didn't even punish him in any way I could tell. He just told him not to do it again and went back to planning how to clean up the mess."

"What do you think we should have done?" Kiko asks.

"I don't know..." Riku starts, "_Something_. He almost never uses his expense account for anything but work, he won't let us move him into a bigger office, and he spends pretty much all day teaching class, inventing stuff, or overseeing missions like this. He doesn't eat much, sleeps in his office, and otherwise has no luxury we can take away. I don't even know _how_ we can punish him."

"Beats me," Kiko sighs. She doesn't care to involve herself in any politics whatsoever. If Uina is going to be a dick, better someone else determine how to take care of it. She needs a new topic and fast... perhaps Riku knows something about this tank? Worth a shot.

"How does this tank work?" Kiko asks.

"You could stand to be a little more specific," Riku quips.

"There are all these guns on it, but only four seats," Kiko says as a hopeful starting point.

"You can program them," Riku answers, "I don't know much besides Guillermo's advertising, to be honest. '45 barrels of total destruction!' It's misleading because the Vulcan is just one gun with six rotating barrels, but I guess they worry that we might buy from someone else if they don't sound impressive. 'Guillermo: Power Over Sense' would be a better slogan. They also talk a lot about how many options they have. Ditch the bottom front and rear cannons, get an extra 500 kilometers driving distance in fuel. That's what we're in right now. There are ones that replace the main cannon with a missile array, ones that can launch torpedoes from the coast, ones that somehow fit a cloaking device by cutting out all but one seat and cannon. You can convert almost all of them to almost any other one with their 200,000 munny a year live-in base technicians."

"Damn," Kiko remarks, now genuinely bored.

"King Mickey just keeps buying, buying, buying," Riku complains, "He replaced 12,000 tanks with this new model. Didn't even keep the old ones; just returned them for a fraction of their value. He doesn't care that the G3 only has two more gun slots than the G2. How many damn guns do you need on a tank, anyway? They weren't even five years old when he did this, too. Waste of money if you ask me."

"Yeah..." Kiko says, staring blankly into her monitor. Enough talk. She's just going to sit here and wait for something else to happen. Go into power save mode. Waiting... waiting... waiting... 5 minutes... 15 minutes... 30 minutes... 130 minutes... how long is Sora going to sleep, anyway? And the navigation system said 93 kilometers when this started. Why does it now say 112?

"Are we going the wrong way?" Kiko asks. Riku gives this loud annoyed sigh.

"Yes," Riku responds, "We just wasted two hours driving the wrong way really, really slowly..."

"But why does it say 112 now?" Kiko asks.

"It was 93 kilometers to the stone bridge," Riku explains, "Now we have 112... 111 to the base of the mountains. This thing only goes maybe 50 kilometers an hour with the wind on its back, so don't blame me for being so slow."

"I didn't say anything..." Kiko remarks, "...I wish I had a Game Boy or so-"

"Hold that thought," Riku interrupts, letting the controls jerk out of his hands as he rolls out of his seat. The tank comes to a choppy rolling stop as Riku stands right over Sora and lightly smacks his cheeks a little.

"Zuh..." Sora groggily murmurs as he turns his head the other way.

"Hey, buddy, wake up," Riku commands, giving a light jostle to the shoulders.

"What's going on?" Sora mumbles, wiping his eyes with his fists.

"You're driving," Riku states, unbuckling Sora's seatbelt.

"But I'm still tired..." Sora whines, squinting his eyes as he withdraws his hands.

"It only took me half an hour to get through Fanlasnir," Riku chides, "Even Kiko wa-"

Sora starts coughing up this thick pink liquid all over Riku, drenching his shirt and jacket. Riku stands there for a minute, dumbstruck, before whistling some odd melody. Chou gently wakes up to the sound of this discordant harmony, rolling in her seat belt a little before going straight into neutral.

"Something wrong?" Chou asks, looking around a little.

"Is this healthy?" Riku asks as Sora coughs and hacks even more of the stuff out.

"Did you keep it all in?" Chou asks, "You're supposed to spit it out when it starts overflowing."

"God, I feel like crap..." Sora remarks, leaning over the side of his chair as he continues his wet coughing. Perhaps Guillermo should have sickness bags somewhere in here, but it's too late for that now. Riku's terse expression lightens up a little as he watches, concern buried under his stony expression.

"Dinner break," Riku announces.

"I'm fine," Sora says through lighter coughs, "Help me get to the driver's seat."

"Are you sure?" Riku asks as he looks over his buddy, "I can just take us the rest of the way. I don't want you to drive us off a cliff or something."

"Just give me some coffee and I'll be fine," Sora says, attempting to get up on his own and failing. Riku sighs and helps Sora up into the driver's seat, strapping his seatbelt for him. He grabs a whole bunch of rations from the rack and tosses a standard tin to Kiko and Chou. More beans and dried peaches. Hooray for variety. Chou places the tin aside as she takes out some plastic bag full of a purple grassy stuff and starts munching it by the clump. 950,000 munny a year for that? Riku pours in a whole canister of ground coffee, mixes in some water, and uses his keyblade to generate a controlled fire. Nice to see it has uses out of combat. After a few minutes, Riku desummons his keyblade and pours a couple cups of this awful smelling brown liquid.

"Thank you," Sora says, downing the stuff like he hasn't had a drop to drink in three days. Well, if he likes it, why not? He can have Kiko's cup while he's at it.

"I'm going to get some sleep," Riku announces as he caps the mug and places it back on the rack, "Wake me when we get there."

"Sure thing," Sora says, now bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. The wonders of awful coffee.

"Kiko," Riku starts in a rapidly dropping tone of voice as he closes his eyes, "Sleep is always an option. If you're bored... just go to sleep... whinymrfls..."

**--**

It takes another two and a half hours before anything noteworthy happens. Kiko only wishes now that she took along that CD player when she had the chance. Sure, she doesn't like the albums, but something about them seem important... why? She has no clue. Probably that dream she only half-remembers. If only Uina didn't hoard those albums she bought. Six hundred choices has to yield at least something good.

Regardless, after way, way, way too long, they're now finally here. There's something of a pink mist rising from the peaks, a phenomenon that feels oddly intangible. It's almost as though it's some construct in the mind. The mountains themselves look oddly hollow, the stone eroded into loose fragments by the meter. Something unnatural is happening beneath the surface. This must be the place.

"Okay," Sora loudly announces, "Show time!"


	60. God Save the Queen

Here it is: the mountain range. Hours and hours of travel by foot and tank have brought them here to this spot, the sun nearly finished hiding behind the peaks. Kiko never quite appreciated the importance of the space ships until now... are they still Gummi? They seem like they're just made out of heavy metal alloys and some type of weird hexagonal glass. Normal machinery powered by normal means; not Gummi blocks powered by smiles or whatever. Seems intuitive enough; why bother asking about it? She can just imagine the board meeting that resulted in the change for the game, though:

'I don't like the space ships,' a balding executive in his fifties wearing an Armani™ suit, a Rolex™ watch, and a Hinterteilloch™ expression would complain, 'They're too science fiction. _Change them_.'

'Well...' the put-upon head writer wearing an outfit worth less than the executive's coffee would stammer, tapping his pencil and eating some sweets, 'How about... ships made of... gummy bears... blocks... that are powered by... smiles? That sound good?'

'_Make it so_,' the executive would state with indifference, leaving for his power lunch before anything else can be said. A lot of things can probably be explained that way. Kind of disappointing.

Regardless, the group has come to a stop at this pile of rocks. Seems the navigation wants them to continue another kilometer this way, but the path is blocked off. Perhaps it's convenient they came in a big-ass tank. Sora seems to hold reservations about this, though.

"Okayyyy..." Sora muses, staring intently at the controls, "Everyone ready?"

"Yeah," Riku affirms.

"Going to fire the main cannon," Sora states, just kind of gazing forward. He pensively flips a few switches and adjusts a few dials, but nothing seems to be happening. He brings up something on the heads-up display and starts cycling through various menus, glossing over schematics for the vehicle and tactical maps of various coloration. Riku watches with passive disinterest, his expression becoming slightly more impatient with each repeated status screen. After about six repeats of the tactical map, he lets off a loud sigh.

"Any time, Sora," Riku prods.

"Almost there," Sora responds, gradually pulling back on the controls. The tank rolls back really slowly as some number rises on the display. He eventually stops when the number reaches 50 and resumes the menu cycling. What's going on, anyway? Sora seems apprehensive about something. Does he not know how to fire the gun? He's an expert pilot capable of apparently breaking a planetary blockade that grounded a whole army, so this should be easy.

"What's wrong, Sora?" Riku asks.

"The computer won't let me fire," Sora answers, defeated.

"Why not?" Riku asks.

"I think it's the safety," Sora explains, "I thought it was set to a minimum distance, but it should show up somewhere on the screen. I can move the cannon, but it just refuses to fire. I think it requires a lock-on, but it won't let me target those rocks. I'm trying to figure out how to override the safety, but this control system kind of sucks."

"I'll get it," Riku sighs with irritation, reaching into the rack and pulling out a gigantic bound manual. A bunch of page flips later, he tosses it aside and turns to his console. Some menu cycles later, a large warning screen comes up with a flashing red hand in a stop sign.

"Warning," the monotonous female voice says, "Safety override is discouraged. Do you wish to continue?"

Riku mashes the spacebar with irritation, the screen flashing red a few times before going back to normal. Riku cycles through the bottom bar to the main cannon, aims at about the center of the rock pile, and fires. A loud hum reverberates through the hull for a few seconds before a huge shockwave jolts everybody forwards. A thick, bright white laser with spiraling energy balls circling around the beam smashes right through the rocks, detonating into a bright spherical explosion that sends thousands of stone fragments flying. Many even get some type of charge, trailing energy as they arc through the air. The sphere of destruction eventually implodes into a puff of smoke, revealing a pile of rubble where boulders once stood. Impressive.

"There you go," Riku sighs.

"Onwards to adventure!" Sora exclaims, shoving the controls all the way forward. Seems the navigation now shows another eight kilometers left to go. At least this won't take too long. Still, that cannon brings up a pretty interesting question. No time like the present to ask.

"Um, Sora?" Kiko says.

"Yeah?" Sora responds.

"Why do we use bullets when we have lasers?" Kiko asks.

"Lasers take a _lot_ of energy," Sora explains, "We used to have some laser rifles we were testing, but they were six times heavier, fired at a third the speed, and were _barely_ more powerful than assault rifles with explosive-tipped bullets. No real point. They do at least _look_ awesome, though."

"I'm sure," Kiko remarks. Maybe that's what 'Twilight's Javelin' is? A laser cannon? Sure doesn't seem like a bullet gun.

"It makes sense for a tank like this," Sora continues, "Can only fire once every minute or so, but it can fire as many shots as you want if you can keep the engine running."

Kiko just ignores Sora as she watches the main screen cluster intently. Not too far to go. It still takes another couple minutes before they reach what appears to be a cave. Seems large enough for the tank to pass through, but Sora comes to a dutiful stop just short of it. Without a word, he powers down the tank through more indecipherable switches and crawls through to the hatch. Everybody else seems to be on the same track, wordlessly leaving the tank. Kiko decides to just go with it. Perhaps the tunnels aren't big enough all the way through? The group comes to a stop just short of the mouth, Sora turning to face Chou.

"So..." Sora starts, "Which way?"

"I don't know..." Chou says, looking around apprehensively, "It's been so long."

"You know..." Riku comments, "There's only about thirty square kilometers to these mountains. Stream runs about a kilometer deep. I'm sure we can find it well before next Monday."

"I guess you're right," Sora admits, "Onwards!"

The group enter the cave with little fanfare, Sora bringing back the eye straining blue light. These caverns seem to have some type of odd tracking to them, micro-cuts running all over every last meter. Some fissures are filled with a dull peach-colored substance, appearing as scabs upon the faux-flesh of the stone. Such an odd ecology, obviously forced by some occupying species. It brings a couple pressing questions to Kiko's mind; unfortunately, they all involve Chou. Oh, well. Kiko shifts over to the pink alien.

"What should we expect?" Kiko asks.

"I don't know what you mean," Chou says with an unexpected sincerity as she turns her head to face Kiko. There's some odd mixture of apprehension and joy on her face, apparently unable to choose if she's more afraid of her reunion than she is happy for Kiko to prompt her. Perhaps both in equal levels?

"Well..." Kiko starts, "We're going to a Feylinus nest. What's it like? Are there things we shouldn't do?"

"They won't accept us," Chou flatly states with an unusual pessimism, "They won't attack us, stop us, or do anything else to us if we don't touch them or the gardens. They will call us names, but only I will hear them. We're just going to walk to that room, anyway."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Riku interjects, "Have you forgotten our agreement with King Mickey?"

"I don't care," Chou responds without glancing over, an oblivious sort of flippant quality in her voice, "They won't accept. It's a waste of time."

"We won't know if we don't try," Riku states, making some facial gesture to Kiko behind Chou's back. What is he trying to communicate?

"It's useless," Chou retorts with tears starting to fill her eyes, "They are afraid of humans. Deathly afraid. They talk about humans killing others and destroying the environment for no reason but 'fun'. They talk about humans hunting us for our sacks and blood. They talk about how humans are stupid animals, building bigger weapons to kill each other better. But their fear of humans is nothing like their fear of me. I'm a freak; a 'human-lover'. If the queen even lets me in, it will just be to yell at me."

"Come on..." Riku says, making more expressions at Kiko, "If they just see that we're nice, open people, surely, they'll agree."

Kiko suddenly realizes the meaning behind Riku's expression: he wants her to talk Chou into this... plan or whatever. Nice to see that she has just graduated from 'tourist' to 'personal counselor'. Still, she can't do much to protest this implied role without ending up as an insubordinate. Gathering her strength, she lightly holds Chou's hand up with both of her's. Almost immediately, Chou's tears stop flowing as her face gains some flush, eyes gazing with a certain longing. The both of them come to a gradual stop as the alien turns to focus on Kiko.

"It will be okay," Kiko says with bored disinterest, "I'm... proud of you for coming and I would be... happy if you could... talk with the queen... or whatever."

"Really?" Chou asks, "You mean it?"

"Yes..." Kiko says, trying quite a bit harder now that she notices Riku's disappointed expression. Maybe it's pure luck that Chou is too infatuated with Kiko to really notice the lack of enthusiasm. Maybe not. Kiko never made any promise that she could force the pink alien to do anything, so Riku will just have to accept any outcome as it comes. Chou's face becomes more awestruck with each second, her body gradually coming closer like as though by some sort of weak magnetism. All at once, Chou yanks her hand away and latches onto Kiko's left arm. She loops her slender arms around the forearm as she burrows her head into the inner elbow, her breathing practically a purr reverberating from her hard shell of a torso.

"I'll do it," Chou says softly, muffled by the mesh of the outfit, "But please: keep me safe. Lend me your strength. Don't let me go."

"Well..." Kiko says, looking around uncomfortably. Way too close for comfort, the implications of this agreement rather disconcerting. Already, just the fact that Feylinus magic... whatever involves mitochondria is past the line. It's bad enough that Chou has imposed icky fluid sharing, direct emotional manipulation, and lots of physical contact without her permission, but it has almost always been exclusively an exchange towards Kiko. What can she draw from her? Kiko looks to Riku for some kind of guidance. He's just mouthing yes while nodding his head. Some use he is.

"Please," Chou says, rubbing her head, "For me."

"You're not going to cast anything, are you?" Kiko asks, trying to impose a subtle bluntness in her words. Something Riku catches but Chou doesn't. Worst possible outcome.

"No," Chou says, "Just keep me close. I'll be fine."

"Sure," Kiko affirms, only hoping she can somehow reverse this later. She hates being around Chou. Hates it. That she's forced to play this role of hug-buddy makes her skin crawl. Maybe after the queen rejects her, Chou will be too sad to remember this gesture and Kiko can continue her life apart... or as apart as Riku allows, anyway.

"It's that way," Chou says, pointing towards a passage without removing her hand from Kiko's arm.

"Thank you," Riku says, giving an 'okay' sign to Kiko as he mouths 'good job'. Sora kind of looks on with a certain detachment before turning and leading onwards. What he thinks of this whole ordeal is anybody's guess. He doesn't seem in on it, at least.

Winding corridor after winding corridor paves the path, each one with thicker peach fluid becoming more and more pink under scrutiny. The air seems to become more and more humid with each step, the condensation more and more overwhelming the deeper they get. It's kind of weird considering the lack of any type of ventilation, natural or otherwise. Eventually, one turn reveals a glowing pink light in the distance. Chou performs a sudden stop and burrows her head deeper into Kiko's shoulder, hyperventilating right through the sleeves. Kind of a balmy breath.

"It will be okay," Kiko says with obligation, "Come on. We're almost there."

Chou starts lightly leading towards the light, no words needed for her intent. Perhaps it's better to just let her lead from this point on. This is her inner demon she must confront. Why force her into it? Sure, there's already been some level of force thus far, but no more. If she backs out, Riku and King Mickey will just have to accept the failure and move on with their lives, dream be damned.

As the group approaches the light, two figures start to become clear. Obviously Feylinus, but not anything at all like Chou. Standing more than seven feet tall, they are broad in frame and thick in stature. Their wild manes of hair fall all the way down to the ground, thick, matted, and glittering as a gradient of pink to purple. Their stony faces with pink eyes, lacking pupils, look hard as steel yet soft and delicate. It takes Kiko a second to realize they're naked, but more of a natural animal-state than a shameful human one. They fawn over each other, an innocence in their cuddling and face rubbing. In spite of a lack of genitals or other features on their bronzed skin, they seem oddly feminine.

"What _are_ those?" Sora asks as he desummons his keyblade, staring at the two apparent sentries.

"Feylinus," Chou answers, "Soldiers. They guard us from humans and other things that want to hurt us."

"They look... different," Kiko remarks. It's not until the group comes within fifteen meters that the Feylinus break their longing gaze from each other. Chou only slightly detaches herself from Kiko in order to match the gaze of the giant pink aliens ahead, staring intently. Out of nowhere, these vague voices, no discernible accent or auditory trace but with reverberation and a constant phase shift call out from the general direction of the two Feylinus.

"Traitor," say these voices with an oddly detached disgust, a pair in some type of unity.

"I only wish to pass," calls out another ethereal voice from surprisingly close. Could it be? The two soldiers gaze into the passage behind, then each other. Some type of odd chatter, intangible to the ears but within the realm of thought, emanates from that stone hallway. The two giant aliens turn back to face Chou with a look of grudging acceptance.

"You may pass, mutant," calls out the pair in unison once again, "Make it swift; the collective need not your heretical thoughts corrupting it."

Chou starts to shiver a little, but practically drags Kiko forwards to the parting Feylinus. The group walks past without incident, the gaze of the sentries focused and unbroken. Kiko starts to wonder what they are talking about. Chou called herself a 'human-lover': what did she mean? Why the remarks about 'mutant', 'traitor', 'heretical thought'? Chou isn't capable of any such thing. She's just unrelentingly sweet... in a disturbing, off-beat kind of way.

A turn around the corner reveals a surprisingly spacious interior. Pink light floods the cavern from these bulbous plant-like structures, revealing a thick flora that covers nearly every meter. Dark purple grass, thick pink vines, giant flowers of infinite diversity giving off pink pollen by the gallon. The air is thick and humid, yet oddly lukewarm. Condensation covers nearly every surface with this pink tinted water, dripping off in glittering sparkles of light. There's an odd air of calmness within these quarters, the light soothing and yet disconcerting; an unnatural feeling of exclusion.

Almost as numerous as the plants are the Feylinus themselves. Always paired and never out of physical contact, they adroitly glide around from place to place almost aimlessly. While the soldiers are present, they are very rare compared to this similar type wandering around. Standing about five foot six, these creatures are much thinner and sprightlier. Their limbs spindly and joints posing abrupt segments, one doesn't take long to notice they have six of them. Along with their fairly standard arms and legs, they possess two additional limbs stemming from their shoulder blades. These kind of slim, almost tentacle-like appendages with tiny three digit hands at the end. Thick tails ending in a split of two fluffy mats of hair complete the image, almost invariably wrapped with that of their partner's. They look oddly feminine in spite of their lack of distinguishing sexual characteristics. All seem to hold an interest in the group, a cacophony of paired voices emanating all around.

_Mutant__  
Freak  
__Impure  
Corrupt  
Unforgivable  
Traitor_

Chou stops once again, her legs shaky and eyes wobbly. Some sound short of a whimper starts to escape her mouth, battling against her all her will to suppress. Seems like Kiko isn't alone in her dislike for Chou, but this is rather unusual. What has Chou done to warrant this sort of attention? She's amongst her own people; they should be accepting her with open arms. Instead, they seem angry that she's here.

Eventually, Chou resumes dragging Kiko along towards this upwards ramp. They pass by some pair crafting artwork out of precious minerals and strands of grass... in fact, they don't seem to have any tools at all, but lots of artwork. Necklaces, bracelets, statues, pottery; all of it personalized, all of it bizarre, all of it sparkling with an unknown quality. It's the only thing any of them carry.

The group continues up the ramp and around the bend, passing still more Feylinus with still more doubled insults. One creature in particular seems to stand out, however. It appears to be a young human boy no older than six, but with a bright pink complexion, purple buds in the forehead, and hair stuck somewhere between brown and pink. He has no clothes, but some type of fleshy stuff seems to conceal his modesty. Utterly freakish. Upon sight of him, Chou fully detaches herself and slinks over while crouching.

"Nicola!" calls out that same single vague voice as before as Chou lightly grabs the boy's arms. It must be: Chou really has been capable of telepathy all this time... at least Kiko thinks it's telepathy, anyway. Seems detached compared to Kern.

"Freak," calls out a less refined, more focused voice from the boy's direction. He kind of stares right through Chou with a dark glance.

"No, it's me, Chou," calls out the vague voice. Well, that confirms that. Chou is a full psychic and nobody knew about it... well, King Mickey seemed to know something about it. Oh, well.

"Traitor," the focused voice retorts, backing his head away as Chou embraces him.

"How can you reject me?" the vague voice continues, "Everything I did, I did for you. I just wanted to feel what you were going through and know what it's like to be human."

"You taint the Feylinus race with your heresy," the focused voice continues, "Get away from me."

"But I just-" the vague voice calls out.

"Get off! Get off! Get off!" the focused voice cries out, the boy giving a hateful howl as he shoves Chou with all his strength. She gasps in surprise as tears start flooding down her eyes, aghast at this behavior. The boy steps forward and punches Chou on her chin with all his force... not enough to really hurt her, but the gesture alone sends Chou into a hyperventilating crying fit.

"Temper, temper," calls out a single vague voice from nearby. In walks a Feylinus from a corridor, much closer in appearance to Chou than the others. She... it differs with its pupil-less eyes, flat nose, and raised back cape things almost appearing as wings. It wears an outfit just like the one Chou used to have early on, but much more refined, layered, and maintained. So it isn't just a quirk on Chou's part; there really is a such thing as Feylinus clothing. It walks over to the boy and gently lifts his arms.

"Your rage is unbecoming of our people," the same voice calls out.

"But the traitor, it disgusts me," the focused voice seems to almost spit out as the boy scowls at Chou. The other alien gently nudges his head to face its own.

"We do not strike those who provoke us," the vague voice continues as the alien rests its forehead upon the boy's, "That... _thing_ may be a traitor, but neither it nor its tainted brethren threatens our people with bloodshed. It might spread heretical thoughts, but our rejection of its social standing and corrupt philosophy are all the retribution required. We need not attack it."

"But it dares to touch me," calls out the focused voice as the boy growls and stomps his foot, "I hate that monster. Hate it so much. I hate its filthy body with that filthy clothing. I hate its dirty, human-loving mind. I hate everything about it and I want it to _die_."

"We have so much to discuss," the vague voice calls out, lifting the boy up onto its shoulder, "I shall arrange a meeting right away."

The alien carries the scowling boy down a corridor, stepping over Chou in the process. Quite a weird sight, indeed. The Feylinus reject Chou, but accept this twisted hybrid of human and alien as one of their own. There's something bizarre about this. If they fear humans, why accept one? If something about Chou is somehow 'mutated' or 'tainted', how can they ignore this mockery of their race? It boggles the mind.

"Small universe, huh?" Riku quietly whispers to Sora. Kiko turns around to look, finding Riku motioning to Chou. She's still on the ground, crying into the thick grass like no tomorrow. Kind of awkward, but if she doesn't do something, Riku will probably hold it against her forever. Kiko starts to bend over to help Chou back up.

"I'm okay," Chou blurts out, springing back up and wiping her eyes. A motion not dissimilar from tossing water out of a cup.

"I'm here if you need me," Kiko says, trying her best to mask her disinterest, nay, her active discomfort.

"I must stay strong," Chou states with faux-conviction, "This is _my_ problem. I can't hold onto you the whole way."

"Fine by me," Kiko responds, more than a little thankful but hopefully not showing it. Chou continues leading the group forward, sniffling a little but otherwise resolute. This is her dilemma and she can solve it any way she likes. As they walk along, the tunnels start thinning out in both width and population. The ratio of soldiers to... the multi-limbed whatever continues to rise, culminating with a group of six sentries for this one tunnel. Chou once again stops, her legs shaking. That whimper seems to be back in full force, completely defeating any suppression she might have. Kiko starts to move in, but Chou hold up an outstretched hand.

"I can do this," Chou announces, straightening herself up and putting on a game face. She continues towards the cluster, stopping just as they all turn their attention to her.

"Traitor," call out six vague voices in unison.

"I must see the queen," the solitary voice calls out.

"The queen has no business with your heresy," the six voices call out.

"Ask her," the solitary voice calls out. The six soldiers look around at each other, then behind. More vague chatter with nary an auditory peep. After a few seconds, they turn back with that same grudging acceptance.

"The queen will see you, monster," the voices call out, the soldiers moving aside, "Bring your tainted companions."

Chou leads the group past the soldiers, staring straight forward with conviction. Kiko finds it a bit worrisome to walk so close past six giant aliens all staring at her, but whatever. Another turn shortly after leads into a very detailed, vibrant room swirling with every color within the pink to purple spectrum. Woven drapes of grassy strands hang from the ceiling, curving inwards and full of bizarre tapestry. What appear to be organic fountains fashioned of giant flower petals spray water like geysers, showering the area with a sparkling pink mist. All point toward a center pedestal with grassy pillows in a mound.

But it is not the mound that's interesting so much as the creature sitting on top of it. It is a majestic thing, standing six feet tall with genuine wings almost twice that in width. The creature has a face similar to that of the boy's caretaker, but with an almost statuesque appearance. Each feature perfectly chiseled, perfectly proportioned, perfectly arranged. Every strand of hair, every fibre of wing, every patch of blush, all are glowing softly and pleasantly. The only other difference is an enlarged sack below the wings but above the legs, glowing purple orbs floating in a pink fluid stasis. A creature that seems to defy gravity and inspire awe regardless of one's own personal feelings. An opinion shared by the half dozen Feylinus similar to the boy's caretaker, all fawning over their queen.

"Welcome back, traitor," call out a majestic voice from the direction of the queen, gracefully extending her arms forwards in an inviting gesture. Chou walks up and embraces the queen, burrowing her head into her hard abdomen.

"I need to talk with you," calls out the less impressive voice, "It's important."

"What can you say that will hold any weight?" the majestic voice calls out, "You betrayed us. You tainted your purity and corrupted your mind. You hold no stature in our society."

"Why?" the solitary voice call out as the queen lifts Chou up to her face, "Why must I be cast away? What I did was for the benefit of us all."

"We cannot let you destroy the purity of our race," the majestic voice continues, the queen rubbing Chou's cheek with her own, "You drew from the human and twisted your body. You adopt human culture with little regard for your own identity. You train to fight as a profession and enter battlefields of your own free will. You desecrate the sacred right of Fanlasnir by freely giving it away to these older, violent, magic-corrupted _humans_. You are a disgrace of a Feylinus and, worse of all, a prince. To think one of such high status can fall so low."

Something suddenly hits Kiko with that statement: Chou is a 'prince' and, thus, male? But he or she looks and acts so feminine and allows people to identify him or herself as female. Then again, the Feylinus all seem feminine across the board and their actual reproductive methods seem very different from the norm. Male and female are probably meaningless concepts and their identity as such lies in their own choice. Damn aliens with their lack of identifiable humanity.

"Why the fear and distrust of humans?" the solitary voice calls out, "I have met many humans and most have been kind, considerate, and faithful. My friends here will do anything for me."

"Your 'friends' do not care about you," the majestic voice calls out, the queen glancing over the rest of the group, "All are on orders from a dubious ruler to accommodate you for his agenda. The white one cares little for you, the brown one cares nothing at all, and the blue one hates you more with every passing second. The only loyalties are between the white and brown along with the blue to the white, but not the white to the blue. You are quite alone, a mere tool to be used up and discarded."

"I don't hate Chou," Kiko says with conviction, Sora and Riku jerking their heads to face, "I just find her weird."

"Wait... you can _understand_ this?" Sora asks, baffled.

"Kind of," Kiko admits.

"**You have no place addressing me with your filthy mouth-speech, **_**human**_**,**" calls out the majestic voice as the queen looks right into Kiko's eyes, a special kind of deafening reverberation that seems to hit the mind like a baseball bat. Kiko staggers backwards as she grabs at her head, shaking all over as she desperately tries to keep her balance. She fails.

"Please, understand," the solitary voice calls out, "They have a good cause. The Heartless threaten all life across the universe and it's only if we all band together that we can survive."

"Typical humans," the majestic voice retorts, "Imposing their will upon others as though they have the right. The Heartless are merely another species, no morality of their own and no will but what is given them. Humans are their prey because they hold darkness in their hearts and contempt for not only the other species, but also themselves. We, the Feylinus, have nothing to fear for our hearts are pure and our enemies distant. Humans kill living creatures both plant and animal to feast to mammoth sizes. We only eat what is given willingly from the grass of the maijer, the fruit of the paopu, and the nectar of the lyriam. We bring life with us; humans bring death. Is it not our responsibility to protect humans from themselves."

"But please," the solitary voice calls out as Kiko stands back up, "Humanity can be redeemed. We see it in the orphans we adopt and I see it in my friends. Why can't we adopt the whole race? Surely, together, we can learn so much from each other."

"We will not join your spiteful coalition," the majestic voice calls out, "You insult us with your request for a military alliance. We do not concern ourselves with bloodshed and most certainly not at the bequest of _humans_. To think you are so bold as to suggest such a course is an insult to everything we stand. In fact, you are no better than humans; worse, even. You were one of my jewels, a prince destined to spread our tranquility. You tasted the fruit of purity and rejected it for the taint of humanity."

"At least teach me Pyrmaolindr," the solitary voice calls out as Chou starts to cry once again.

"Look at you," the majestic voice calls out as the queen lowers Chou back down, "Weeping like some human child at my rejection. You knew no other outcome would result and yet, you cry like it is an unfortunate event; as though any other possibility ever existed past, present, or future. So irrational, so demanding, so _human_. I will not allow you to despoil the Feylinus arts any more than you already can. You shall not learn the sacred pillar of the Pyrmaolindr for in rejecting the Feylinus purity, it has rejected you."

"But..." the solitary voice calls out, unable to continue. The queen slowly backs away from Chou, retracting her arms.

"You are not even here exclusively for us," the majestic voice continues, "You seek arcana to awake a most terrible evil upon the universe. Typical, short-sighted humanity, tampering with forces far outside its control. It concerns us little. Go ahead; awake the destroyer. She can obliterate you and every last human while the Feylinus remain safe and harmonious. We have witnessed a thousand genocides and we shall witness a thousand more, always safe, always clean, always pure."

"But we're trying to stop her..." the solitary voice calls out, fading off once again.

"Your intention matters not," the majestic voice retorts, "Go snatch up your arcana, my prince... or 'Chou', as the blue human calls you."

"Her name is Kiko," the solitary voice calls out.

"Her name is not Kiko, but that is meaningless," the majestic voice calls out, "We shall never meet again. Once you and your insults to Fanlasnir leave our sight, all of you will cease to exist in our minds. My beloved prince, the one that took your place, will be your guide. After you get your trinket and leave our nest, any further trespass will be an assault upon our people dealt with just like any other. Begone."

With that, one of the fawning admirers breaks off and walks up to Chou. It's quite a juxtaposition to see a proper Feylinus prince next to her. The creature, like the other nearby bipedals, has stiffened wings, a flat nose, and no pupils. It also seems a little more upright, a little thinner, and a little more fluid. Oddly enough, it also looks less offensive to Kiko's sensibilities than Chou; it may be alien, but at least it doesn't seem like it has any connection to humanity. She'll have to ask about that topic some time.

The prince lightly grabs Chou's arm and starts gently leading her out of the room. Doesn't take geniuses for the rest of the group to follow behind, not a word required nor desired. Through the corridors they go, passing by all the malcontents once again. With a prince by the group's side, they don't seem so eager to call out insults. Perhaps they don't wish for a misinterpretation? Regardless, it's kind of pleasant to not 'hear' them.

Down the ramp of the main room they go, heading down another ramp close by. They pass by a pair of cuddling soldiers and out into a mundane area, away from the heavy layers of pink and purple. So glad to be out in the open... well, as open as deep underground caverns get, anyway. Onwards to the real objective.


	61. Spring Cleaning

One never quite appreciates how complex underground caverns can get. Even without Feylinus assistance, they can sprawl for kilometers on end through natural erosion alone. Just the simple fact that they don't collapse under the sheer weight of the stone above is impressive in and of itself, but for clear paths to form by random chance is one of those mysteries of life.

Kiko's boredom is eventually cut short as the group finally arrives at their destination: another giant temple. It's actually quite streamlined compared to that forest one, with only one turn to what must be the altar room. No labyrinth of traps or anything. Just as Kiko's vision implied, there is an infestation of 'Lightside' Heartless here. They don't even have to enter the room to see it; the heavy light pouring around the corner is more than enough to prove it. The Feylinus prince leaves without a sound... or whatever, jogging back towards its home. Certainly not the chatty type.

"Why didn't you mention the Lightside Heartless?" Riku asks, fishing out his goggles. An action mirrored by everybody else.

"Slipped my mind," Kiko admits. No point making excuses.

"Oh, well," Riku shrugs, "That's what Sora and I are here for. Kiko, as Uina kept saying: tourist. These things are _really_ dangerous. Both of those big ones back on Viesca nearly killed all of us."

"I won't do anything," Kiko accepts with her hands raised about halfway. As much as she'd like to be of use to Riku, following his orders takes precedent over fighting alongside him. She shall be the best bench-warmer she can be. Just like her old gym class...

"Let's get started," Sora announces with a thumbs up, taking point into the room. Kiko turns the corner to see a nearly-identical replica of the inner sanctum from before. Moss-covered stone blocks with pools of water all over, the 'Lightside' Heartless all prancing about the grass terrain. The central altar holds a practically identical prize, its red crystal glinting off the voluminous light all around. Even though it's so deep underground, the air actually feels pretty temperate and thick; as though it's located within a forest. The only major difference is the lack of other entrances or exits. Indeed, being so far underground, it seems Cenari's escape plan is rather foolhardy. Not like he has much rationality to guide him, anyway.

"You know..." Riku starts, "We can't just pluck it and leave. It's wedged in real tight and when we touch it, the Lightside are going to go berserk. Let's just kill them now."

"Agreed," Sora responds, summoning his keyblade. Almost immediately, all the Lightside in the room start swarming together into packs and approaching the group with claws at the ready. The usual compliment of both small 'Shimmers' and larger 'Lumines' as King Mickey oh-so-creatively calls them are present, but there's a third type as well. Standing seven feet tall, they are broad in frame and thick in structure. In fact, they seem like duplicates of soldier Feylinus made up of that same shiny fluid as the creatures around them. The only major deviation in form is in their dark purple eyes, twice as large at the cost of the nose and mouth. Lumbering hulks numbering less than half a dozen at first glance.

"See the leader?" Riku asks, summoning his keyblade and dropping into his usual stance. Horizontal in front of face, loose wrist grip. Seems almost amateurish, but watching him fight dismisses any doubt about his skill.

"The blob under the water?" Sora asks as he glances around, "Of course."

"Keep an eye on it," Riku suggests, starting his first rush into the fray. Shimmers leap in packs of two and three at a time, all easily swatted down by Riku's crescent swings. Sora follows behind with his tenacious stance, standing resolute in the face of an incoming Lumine. The creature takes a few wild swings, but a single vertical slash during an opening is all Sora needs. He plows a path towards Riku, crescent slashes through clusters of Shimmers ending with a long jumping thrust into a Lumine. Peak performance, as always. He rejoins his comrade, the two going back to back against the oncoming forces of light.

With a whistle sound reminiscent of a cluster bomb and an unseen speed, one of the Feylinus imitations leaps right in between Sora and Riku. A loud sonic boom accompanies a white shockwave that launches both the keyblade wielders and the surrounding Lightside outwards. Dazed and prone, Riku lies near the recovering Shimmers as the Feylinus imitation turns to pursue. Things are looking pretty grim for him.

Kiko decides then and there that her 'tourism' can go to hell. Riku is at the mercy of these dangerous creatures, she's armed, and they don't seem to be expecting it. She quick draws a pistol, aims, and fires... or would if it didn't just click uselessly. She hit the safety instinctively, so maybe it has a finger-print ident? A quick glance over reveals a shockingly obvious reason: no clip loaded. How silly of her. As she loads a magazine, Riku helplessly rolls on the ground to avoid both downwards pounds of the Feylinus imitation and the attempted tackles of the Shimmers.

With little time, Kiko chambers a round, aims at the Feylinus imitation, and fires... at the worst possible time. Sora emerges through a newly created hole in the giant monster, the bullet exploding less than a meter away. For the briefest of nanoseconds, Kiko sees what she swears is a hexagonal blue grid emerge around her unintended target as he staggers a little on his landing. Riku bounces back up as Sora turns to stare sternly at Kiko. A chopping motion with his hand is all that's needed to signal his discontent. Whatever. Back in the holster it goes.

Kiko watches intently as Sora and Riku manage to deflect the shockwave of another leaping hulk inwards on itself. The creature seems to implode on itself from the sheer force of its own redirected power, condensing into something short of a sphere before bursting all over. You don't mess with the keyblade wielders united. The pair start mowing towards a third giant, Riku slicing the hordes down by the dozen as Sora covers the rear.

It certain is quite the image here: two badasses with nothing more than their wits and their swords, neck deep in vicious creatures outnumbering them a hundred to one... and not even breaking a sweat. In fact, all these numbers do little to affect the control of the battle for as many leaping Shimmers and lumbering Lumines as there are, they always get swatted down like naughty puppies. The numbers keep thinning with every swathe cut through their ranks, even the rare Feylinus imitations falling with pathetic ease. Eventually, the last Shimmer falls to this righteous rampage through nothing more complex than a whip of the hilt. Not wasting any time, Sora and Riku take up positions near the pool with keyblades at the ready.

"Here it comes," Sora announces, bringing his blue blade closer to his waist. Riku bends a little inwards, his feet ready for a spring. About a minute goes by of nothing, the water trickling and prism glinting... weird how it's still really bright even with all the standing Lightside gone... what's taking that thing so long?

"Hmm..." Riku ponders, desummoning his keyblade and walking towards the altar, "I can't blame it if it doesn't want to come out. Sora, buddy, cover me while I get the prism."

"Sure thing," Sora responds, shifting a little to the side. The second Riku touches the prism, a blob of shiny white liquid bursts out of the pool and climbs to a little over three meters. The quivering mass starts to shed off globs of itself, sculpting a humanoid shape as its template. It starts with its legs, sleek and streamlined. What appear to be a pair of knee high boots form from the excess fluid, solidifying into an imitation of leather. Slender arms with metallic looking claws shape themselves around a long flowing cape, itself a part of some type of imitation overcoat. The head takes on an almost gentlemanly appearance, quickly hidden by the formation of a thick helmet with backwards-facing horns. An odd creature, all white outside of its dark purple eyes but with textures across the board.

"Got it," Riku announces as the prism snaps out, leaping over to Chou and handing it over. He dutifully leaps back to Sora as the creature starts its finishing touches, its mass fully solidified into a cohesive whole.

"Type V?" Sora asks as the creature gives a loud shriek.

"About that, yeah," Riku responds, "Oval Gash?"

"Got it," Sora confirms, shuffling away at a steady rate. All of the sudden, the monster jumps off of the ground, bounces off the ceiling, and lands in front of Riku with a loud thud and a focused shockwave uprooting the ground. Much too fast for Riku to counter, the force launches him up into the air with wild abandon. Sora rushes in as quickly as possible, his swing countered by a swipe of the creature's claws. The sheer force of the blow rips the sword out of Sora's hand, the weapon clattering across the room. Sora dodges the follow-up swipe and resummons his keyblade just in time to parry a third, the force sending him back a good ten meters with heels scraping the floor. It must have considerable strength to move Sora's dug-in crouch.

Riku rushes in for a swing, the creature handily leaping out of the way. It bounces off the ceiling towards a wall and back at Riku's side, claws forward and eyes focused. Riku leaps over the shockwave, almost taken off-guard by the monster's immediate upwards leap. Riku continues to rise upwards faster and faster with each parried slash, his feet eventually landing on the domed ceiling. One last block of a double-clawed smash travels through Riku's form and cracks the tile around his feet. Riku finds himself lightly embedded in the crater, the beast falling back towards the ground.

Sora quickly rushes underneath, slashing upwards to no avail. The monster latches onto the blade, spins around like a gymnast on a parallel bar, and kicks itself off of Sora. Riku misses his downward slash by mere centimeters as the creature arcs backwards and lands with catlike grace a good twenty meters away. Sora and Riku start to rush in, but a concentrated stream of blue and white fire from the creature's mouth forces them to scatter in either direction of the blast. The monster dashes right through its own lingering blaze at Riku, the latter barely able to parry a double-clawed downwards smash.

It's at this point with Riku locked and Sora blocked that Kiko decides to forgo her 'tourist' designation once again. It's kind of hard to see through the fading fire, but she must take a shot once an opportunity presents itself. She draws the other, empty gun, loading a magazine and aiming at the fray. They're still much too close together, the monster advancing forward with every step backwards Riku takes. Just as the beast knocks its target well out of range, Sora swoops in from behind with keyblade at the ready. The creature doesn't even bother looking behind as it elbows Sora, launching him across the room. Another window of opportunity is closed just as fast, Riku dashing in for another futile swing. This is going to take a while.

"**Aiiiiiea**," screams a feminine voice from behind. What the hell could possibly have happened to Chou? Kiko spins around on her heel to find a human holding the pink alien hostage. He's a corpulent man of about five foot nine, his bulbous stomach barely held by his black hazard suit covered with pink stains. His fat face is covered with scratchy stubble, unable to hide his numerous scars and burns. He's holding Chou up with one arm while the other holds a long, pink-stained, double-edged meat hook threateningly against her throat. Kiko instinctively brings her gun to bear.

"Don't even think about it!" shouts the man in a hoarse voice, holding Chou up to cover his face. She looks scared crapless, frozen with fear and sweating pink-traced fluid.

"Who are you?" Kiko shouts.

"Drop the weapon!" the man commands forcefully, digging the hook in just short of breaking the flesh.

"Answer the question," Kiko counters, unflinching. She thinks back to that session of Tactical Awareness about hostage situations. Last thing she wants to do is an unconditional surrender. Maybe he holds a melee weapon, but there is no reason to believe he doesn't have a trick up his sleeve. Sorcery, a hidden gun, maybe a pet. Who knows? So long as this stalemate exists, he will not try anything to either her or Chou. Kiko must use this time to figure out a way through this situation.

"Ohhhh..." the man drawls with mock delight, "A Discordian Standoff, huh? You really think I won't use this prince as a meat shield to _kill you_?"

"I don't want any trouble," Kiko asserts, careful not to show any emotion, "Who are you and what do you want?"

"Oh, surrrre," the man growls, "I'll play it your way. You really don't know who I am?"

"Not a clue," Kiko lies. Keep him talking. Look for a solution.

"I am an exotic animal hunter," the man explains with sadistic glee, "Rhinos, dragons, basilisks. You name it, I'll get it. They are not where the big money is, though. My business is with Feylinus and let me tell you, business is good. I'm open for business and with this catch, business will be booming."

"That's lovely," Kiko remarks in a hopefully provocative manner.

"Four months, I have waited," the man continues without a hitch, Chou appearing to become a bit more reserved over time, "Four. Long. Months. You know how _maddening_ it is to watch that castle with a scope two kilometers away, always at the risk of discovery by you _filthy_ do-gooders or that _vile_ Radiant Garden police force? How _aggravating_ it is to go _weeks_ at a time without even _seeing_ my mark only for it to come out beside _Riku_ of all people? You know how teeth-gratingly _infuriating_ it was to follow you to both Amaterasu and Viesca, always just a little behind, always at risk of discovery, and not even get a _single_ opening? Can you _feel_ just how _**angry**_ I am?!"

"Sort of," Kiko sighs. This is not going to end well.

"Well, _now_, I have my prize!" the man roars triumphantly, "A domesticated Feylinus prince, virginal and emotionally stable. Oh, did I _ever_ hit the jackpot."

The man starts bellowing loudly, Chou shaking with each rumbling guffaw. As she shifts a bit to the side, she gathers pink energy in her fist and contorts her arm in a wild swing at his face. He doesn't even flinch from the impact, squeezing her in ever closer and digging the hook into her neck. A very light trickle of pink blood starts to drip over the weapon.

"O-ho!" the man calls out right into Chou's ear, "This one has some spunk in it! How delightful! Sorry to say that I already replaced all my mitochondria with nanomachines, so your witchcraft won't work on me! Stupid, stupid animal. Oh, how I am going to _delight_ in picking you apart. You will spend the rest of your life as my test subject, surrendering all your species' secrets. I will figure out your psychology and how to subvert it. I will figure out what neurotoxins can disable you and use it on your brethren. And with your sack, your beautiful, beautiful sack..."

The man cops a feel of Chou's right hip, squeezing with sadistic glee. The pink alien yelps in sheer panic, her face contorting in an unusual sort of delirium. More of a violation than an attack.

"...I will make more of you," the man continues into Chou's ear, the latter hyperventilating, "You are worth all the gold, all the platinum, all the enriched uranium of a thousand galaxies. More than you can ever imagine."

"So you just want Chou?" Kiko asks, an idea crossing her mind. It's a bit of a desperate one, but desperate times call for desperate measures. She doesn't really have any other option that might work without killing somebody, so it's full speed ahead with this one.

"Is that its name?" the man chortles, "No, I just spent all that time explaining everything to you because I want to watch you squirm. _Of course_ I want this thing!"

"I don't care what happens to Chou," Kiko says, calm and cool, "You can have her."

"Nice to see we've come to an agreement," the man barks as he starts to shuffle back a little.

"But she holds something important," Kiko continues as she adjusts her gun ever so slightly, "In the pouch on her left hip is a red prism. Give it to me."

"Why?" the man asks with indignation as he stops.

"It's worth nothing to you," Kiko responds, "You can't sell it on the black market. No smart person will buy it; the only one who wants it besides me is Maleficent. Do you know who she is?"

"Yes," the man answers, his voice unphased. It almost seems like he's considering going to her. Time to change that.

"Maleficent will not pay you a dime," Kiko continues, "If you go to her, she will kidnap you, torture you until she is convinced you can't find any other prisms, and when she's done, she will kill you. If you don't go to her, she will hunt you down to whatever corner of this universe you run like a dog. So long as you hold that prism, you will not be safe. Since you have to throw it away anyway, why not give it to me?"

"Hmm..." the man ponders, looking around pensively. Time to seal the deal.

"Besides," Kiko continues, "We'll also hunt you down to whatever corner of this universe like a dog to get that prism. Sora, Riku, Grandmaster Ui-"

"Oh, sod it," the man interrupts, "I get the point. I'll leave it-"

"No," Kiko interrupts in turn, flipping on the targeting laser and pointing it at Chou's forehead, "Here."

The man kind of stares at Kiko for a while as Chou locks this expression of sheer horror. Kiko only hopes she is communicating a total disregard for Chou's life, but the fact that he's accepting must mean something. If only she could see what Sora and Riku are doing... probably struggling to stay alive. Considering the time, sound distribution, and positioning, it's more than likely that they aren't even aware of this encounter. Probably better that way because with this man's tone, one or more of them will probably do something really stupid and Chou will just be totally screwed.

"...is this a trick?" the man grunts, "I lower my guard, you cap me?"

"No," Kiko lies. Not like she was expecting it to happen that easily, anyway.

"Prove it," the man demands, "Drop your weapon."

"Yeah, sure," Kiko responds, flipping the safety on, tilting it on end, swiveling it to her side, and dropping it in one smooth motion.

"And the other one," the man grunts, "_Don't_ hold it. Bounce it out of the holster and kick it away."

"Fine," Kiko sighs, using her pinky extended from her fist to flip it out of the holster and kicking it as it drops. Her plan has gone from a couple viable options to merely one: the long shot. The odds are slim, but this is Neverland, home of miracles. She thinks back to Sora's explanation. Feel the flow, bend to the flow, absorb the flow. There is definitely some type of undercurrent in this world. Something intangible, something ethereal, something unreal. She can feel it, but can she wield it?

"Here's your trinket," the man grunts, loosening his hook grasp while he fumbles with Chou's side pack. There's only the smallest window of opportunity and Kiko needs all the time she can get. Time, time... slow down. Slow down, time. Time, slow down. Time. Slow down. Slow, slow, slow. Kiko focuses with all her might on speeding up her perception. It must be working. The man's movements keep getting slower, almost glacial. That slight flutter of the flap as the man reaches in seems to take all the time in the world. More than slow enough for her.

The man eventually fishes the prism out, reaching back and tossing it underhand. The momentum sends him forward just enough to get the hook off of Chou's skin. Now's the time. Kiko thrusts her arm out and focuses all her attention on the lying gun. To her. Come to her. To her infinite surprise, the gun rises right back into her hand with incredible speed even relative to her perception. The prism is sparkling as it twirls through the air. Glinting. Flickering. Distracting. All the cover she needs.

Now comes the hardest part of all: curve the bullet. Kiko starts swinging the gun around, focusing on the man's shoulder with one thought: curve the bullet. Curve. Bullet. Curve. Gun is halfway. Fire. She doesn't see the bullet, but she does see a chunk of the man's shoulder burst apart. The force swings his arm out and around, dropping Chou towards the ground.

Not good enough. Still time for him to recover. Another glint. Kiko reaches up and drags the gun down, firing another curved bullet over Chou's head and into the man's other shoulder. The force of this blow staggers him backwards. Need to get him on the ground. Kiko finishes her swing downwards, reversing the direction and firing another bullet. This one curves between Chou's legs and blows apart the man's calf, now unable to support his considerable weight. Almost there.

Chou hits the ground and starts a collapse into a pile. Kiko brings the gun in and swings it back out, firing another bullet around Chou's head into the man's meat hook. The sheer force of the impact sends the weapon fast enough to cut off all his fingers, each one bouncing off the ground. The man lands on his back and immediately starts scooting backwards with his one good leg. Kiko steps over Chou and walks over to the man, pinning him down with her foot and aiming her gun with the laser in his eye. She looks down on him, her hair falling forward within sight of her eyes. She focuses upon bringing time back to normal, the sway of her hair increasing in speed.

"How in the..." the man grumbles, coughing up some light blood. This is Kiko's moment of glory: she needs to speak. Something declarative, authoritative.

"You are under arrest..." Kiko starts, thinking hard on what to say next, "...as a war criminal against King Mickey's army. Your charges are multiple counts of assault, murder, genocide, breaches of interstellar embargo, smuggling and selling cont-er-a-band goods, and gross violation of human... Feylinus rights."

"Oh, shove it up..." the man retorts, coughing still more blood.

"You have the right to remain silent," Kiko continues, recalling years and years of her dad watching _Law and Order_ at dinner, "Anything you say can be held against you. You have the right to an-"

"You think a jail cell can hold me?" the man growls defiantly, "You might hold me for a month, a year, five years, ten years. No matter how long, I _will_ force my way out and when I do, your days are numbered. I will 'hunt you down to whatever corner of this universe you run like a dog' and when I find you, I won't be so merciful as to kill you. Oh, no. I will beat you into submission and take you from all you hold dear. I will make sure the whole universe knows that I hold you and that is the last time they shall see your unbroken self."

"And in my captivity," the man continues, chuckling a couple trickles of blood out his mouth, "I will destroy you. I will torture you day and night, long after you start begging for mercy, long after you sell out your friends, long after you beg for your death. I will scoop the muscles out of your limbs and force you to feed on them. I will rip your fingernails off and bath your hands in sulfuric acid. I will bleed you dry only to replace it for another round. I will leave no portion of your body or mind unscarred, no bone unbroken, no violation unperformed, no dignity preserved. Only when you no longer feel pain, no longer feel fear, no longer feel anything at all will I finally kill you and once I do, I will do the same to everyone you hold dear. It is as inevitable as the rising sun. **YOU SHALL KNOW NO RESPI-**"

Kiko pulls the trigger with all her conviction, splattering the man's brains all over the ground. A bright flash from far in the distance envelopes the room as Kiko raises her foot and puts a bullet in the man's heart. Not one to take chances, she puts another bullet through what remains of the brain, another in the throat, another in the chest. All hits spaced apart for each shot to ring out in full; a gigantic 'screw you' for the world to witness. The man's leg gives one last final jolt before falling limp. The last bit of struggle gone, life extinguished.

"No," Kiko utters darkly, "You won't."

She continues to stand there for a while longer, taking in the sights and sounds around her. Gone is the noisy din of battle, replaced with the trickle of water and the quiet sobbing of a distressed alien. Feels kind of weird this time around. Another human being dead, with no excuse of instinct or self-preservation to calm her nerves. He was there, unable to do anything but speak and she pulled the trigger with all her wits to guide her. Oddly enough, it actually feels kind of justified. He made those promises with every intent in his voice to keep them. That's as volatile as the act itself.

Some movement near the entrance catches Kiko's attention. She glances up without moving her head, discerning that Feylinus prince from before through her thick hair. It just stares into Kiko's eyes with this disappointed expression. Motionless, noncommittal, unassuming. It tosses aside a bundle of pale red fruits on a vine, some type of inner light glistening within each orb. With this load gone, some wave of distortion washes over the prince. The pink alien fades out of reality, making some unknown hand gesture.

"Holy crap, Kiko..." Sora muses from afar. She just ignores this statement as she turns and walks to Chou, holstering her gun and kneeling down to eye level.

"It's okay," Kiko says, offering her hand, "It's safe now."

"Did you really mean it?" Chou asks as she tries her hardest to suppress her crying, "That you don't care what happens to me?"

"I lied," Kiko admits, feeling cornered by this question, "I needed him to drop his guard. If he thought I wanted you, he would have never let you go for even a second."

"But you sounded so sure of yourself," Chou bawls through a waterfall of tears, suppression attempt over, "You didn't even flinch as you gave me away. You aimed at my head and shot past me to get to him."

"I didn't have much of a window," Kiko explains, "I was not careless in shooting around you. I connected with the magic of this world... or something. I don't know."

"I don't know what to believe any more," Chou sobs, looking downwards to break her gaze. It's really kind of weird to witness this behavior coming from the pink alien. She has been nothing but dedicated to those around her. She has missed every subtle cue, every veiled insult, every bit of body language. Nothing short of avoidance has ever reached her and even then, she completely missed the whole point. Naive, oblivious, and devoted to a fault. To see her reject Kiko's comfort is just truly... for lack of a better term... alien.

"There, there," Kiko says, lightly hugging Chou. The latter embraces with all her gentle might and leans her head over the former's shoulder, the sleeve drenched in mere seconds. The other odd thing about this situation is how relatively reserved Chou is. Even though she's crying so hard, it's not really a panic attack. No animal instinct; just a pure overflow of genuine emotion. The two hold their embrace for a good long while, Chou's weeping eventually settling into a soft sob. Starting to get impatient, Kiko glances around to find Sora and Riku watching from the side. They have this polite expression on their faces, sympathetic and yet impatient.

"Think we're ready?" Riku asks.

"Um..." Kiko says, Riku's statement causing great discomfort. Can he not see Chou here going through an emotional upheaval?

"She's asleep," Riku answers to the implied question, "You can carry her. Are we ready?"

"...sure," Kiko responds, lifting the pink alien up to her shoulder as she stands up. A closer look reveals Sora holding both the red prism and her other gun. Nice of him to clean up after her. Kiko walks over and carefully takes the gun with her free hand, checking the safety and placing it back in the holster. Can never be too safe around guns.

"What happened, anyway?" Sora asks, Riku starting his lead out of the altar room. Not a moment too soon. Too much blood has been spilled here to stay even a second longer.

"That guy tried to kidnap Chou," Kiko explains, "I stopped him."

"That's it?" Sora comments as the group reaches the passageway. Kiko bends over to pick up the fruits as they pass by. They seem fairly important if that prince was willing to come all the way back here with them.

"Well..." Kiko confesses, "I guess there's more to it than that..."


	62. Glass Ceiling

On the far mountainous corner of some backwater planet lies a complex of buildings. Dozens of starports holding hundreds of ships converge upon a single building, its size diminutive to its surrounding landscape. This is not to say that it's small; far from it, in fact. Spanning over a kilometer from end to end, its domed surface consumes the majority of the mass. With square ridges and hexagonal glass windows, it appears almost as an odd type of oversized golf ball. A modern miracle of architecture that looks kind of ridiculous given analysis, but impressive, nonetheless.

A look within this dome reveals it to be all of a single room, its structure completing the implied sphere. Concentric circles of raised platforms trickle down the slopes towards a single central point at the bottom, widening the lower they get. On each ring is an unbroken procession of desks, each labeled with a multiple-language sign on their front and a built-in touchscreen computer on top. Behind each is a well-dressed person, a large variety of ethnicity skewing towards older age. Mostly consistent of male humans, there is the occasional female and alien amongst them that seem all the more out of place. In the center-most area is a single man, well-trimmed beard on his elderly, stoic face. The room's population is completed by hovering robots, all carrying cameras and microphones on long rods.

"United Coalition of Planets bimonthly general assembly," says a booming but reserved voice over a speaker system, "Year 62, month 10, third daily session. Secretary-General Johann Baum presiding. The time is 10:00 starting... now. Begin record."

"Good morning, all," announces a man one circle short of the center, "We'll start with a few remarks by the Secretary-General and then Prime Minister Nichi will speak of his programme for the planet of Phoenicia, followed by the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Phoenicia, Miss Asherah Pa'Uvah. Afterwards, we will hold a discussion about the recent events on Malleus V followed by depositions from Security Council Commanding General King Mickey along with subordinates General Trevor Mithas, Captain Jacob Eades, and Grandmaster Uina. We will close with announcements from Maghin ambassador Jain Pimre and Daeh ambassador Payio Jaemo."

"Good morning," starts the man in the center, "Ladies and gentlemen, Prime Minister Nichi, Foreign Minister Pa'Uvah, King Mickey and guests, ambassadors Pimre and Jaemo. It is a great pleasure to be with you today."

"Last month," the man continues, pressing some buttons on his computer console, "Prime Minister Nichi and I went on a tremendously productive and meaningful trip to Phoenicia. As you know, Phoenicia is at a turning point. It has a real chance for stability and potential prosperity. The centuries of conflict between the nomadic tribes after the gendercide of Pomegranate recently ended with the formation of the Phoenician Directorate and the settlement of star system P791G2, officially renamed Phoenicia. Prime Minister Nichi and I want to support the efforts of President Elect Lio'Fa and Minister Pa'Uvah and we want to send a message to the interstellar community: Phoenicia needs and deserves our help..."

The screen changes to show some hard numbers about economic conditions, construction projects, export quotas, and other crap as the man drones on about something or other involving reconstruction. It's at this point that Kiko finds herself losing interest. So much for an interstellar political group being anything of real interest. It's just C-SPAN all over again.

Kiko decides to glance around the room for something else to do. Today is Riku's birthday, after all, and watching television is kind of rude. Sure, it might be his insistence that the television remain on this boring channel during his own party, but as the host of honor, it's within his right. His other right is the scale... or, rather, lack of one. It's just his own personal room, with only seven people total and the most rudimentary of snacks on the coffee table. Chips, bottled White Dwarf soda, some type of yellow fruit. Even the room's decoration bares little outside of some framed pictures of childhood drawings and photographs. Seems less than elegant for a man of his importance.

His selection of guests is pretty interesting as well. Sora and Kairi are here, naturally, their conversation dominating Riku's attention. Chou stands by Riku's side with a spacey gaze, almost uncomfortable to be here. The four of them are at the corner near the bathroom, simply standing there as they talk about this and that. Shooting the breeze, so to speak. Through the open door to the bedroom sit a girl and boy on the end of the bed. The former seems like some pretentious princess, her outfit audacious and overdone. The boy must have some relation, with a princely uniform of a vague military style. Lots of medals and crap, but obviously none of them awarded by the school. What they're doing here, only Riku knows.

"...yeah, that was priceless," Sora says through the finish of a round of laughs, "You're sure you never led him on?"

"Nope," Kairi says with a smile, "I just said 'we need help' and he _went along with everything I said_. I didn't have to do _anything_."

"It's true!" Riku confirms through a wide smile. So unlike him.

"Good times, good times..." Sora says with a sigh, "Whatever happened to him, anyway?"

"I really don't know," Riku admits, "Do you, Kairi?"

"Can't say I do..." Kairi says, "Last I saw him was when we got back to the castle."

"Same here," Sora says.

"Same here," Riku echoes, "Oh, well. Hey, you remember that concert last month?"

"Oh, do I _ever_," Kairi says with enthusiasm. Kiko turns her attention back to the TV with this emerging topic. She wasn't invited to that thing, so there's no point in paying attention. Probably just some boring local act. The screen has some video feed displaying various construction sites while a stream of text runs underneath with more statistics.

"What I want to do is first," says someone off-screen, "Is follow the plan that Phoenicia has laid out for its construction and its future. After the Secretary-General asked for Dr. Paim to prepare an analysis of Phoenicia and a set of recommendations for its way forward, we met with the leaders of the Phoenician government and asked them to respond to the Paim report with their own plan. We said there's no point in any of us trying to do something based on what we think is right: we have to do what you think is right and what you believe the people need..."

Perhaps that concert is more interesting after all.

"...'bring out Purity!'" Sora says in this mocking, fannish tone as he stifles his laughs.

"Pur-i-ty! Pur-i-ty!" Kairi chimes in, the group unable to hold back their laughter. Seems like one of those things where you just had to be there. Chou's presence amongst them seems rather odd. She isn't looking at anyone, has yet to say anything, and isn't even emoting along to the conversation. Just kind of a statue, really. What's weirder is the fact that Kiko is sitting by herself on the couch and Chou isn't bugging her. She's actually been keeping her distance since that incident on Neverland only nine days ago, but it might just be a chance mood swing. She's gone days without bugging Kiko in the past before.

"...as you know," the television drones, "The Heartless of the Unknown Faction attempted a global assault on the fifth planet of the Malleus system a couple weeks ago. We do not..."

Kiko rises from the couch, picking up a bottle of White Dwarf as she maneuvers around the furniture. This room is a bit crowded and she kind of needs to use the bathroom, anyway. As she approaches the door, Sora glances over with an inviting look.

"Hey, Kiko," Sora greets with a smile and wave, "You should join us."

"Um..." Kiko says, looking around apprehensively, "...sure."

"Come on in," Sora offers, moving over a little towards Chou to open a spot between himself and Kairi. Kiko takes her position, a bit more scooching on Kairi's part required to accommodate Kiko's wide frame. It only reminds her how much she hates being so tall. That and her thick physique do little to let people think of her as a girl. More of a boy with wide hips and large boobs, really.

"As I was saying," Sora continues, "That new album by Perverted Purity bugs me. It doesn't feel like they wrote any of it."

"I'm not sure what you mean," Kairi prods.

"Well..." Sora continues, "'Octopus's Garden' and 'Dear Prudence' are classic Purity, I'll give them that. 'Paperback Writer' and 'Day Tripper' sound kind of soft, but they then do 'Revolution' and 'Helter Skelter' right after. I don't even know what they're talking about in 'Back From the U.S.S.R'. How did-"

"Those are all Beatles songs," Kiko interrupts, proud to have something to contribute. Maybe she's not an expert, but she recognizes those titles.

"Beatles?" Sora asks as he glances over, "Who are they?"

"Just some band from a long time ago my mom used to listen to..." Kiko trails off, now feeling uncomfortable by this callback to her earlier life. She should have thought this through a little before saying anything.

"Eh..." Sora shrugs, "I forgot why Simon hired us back there. Silly me."

"Think we can bug him for more backstage passes?" Riku asks, "Live Wire will be in town next week and I want in. They put on a great show with fireworks and everything."

"Oh, god, I _love_ that band," Sora enthusiastically interjects, "They do the _best_ covers. You hear their version of 'Kickstart My Heart'?"

"Only every day before Basic," Riku says with a smile. Kiko kind of drifts backwards as Sora continues his gushing about this band, eventually ducking into the bathroom with a small degree of stealth. Disappearing in plain sight, so to speak. There's nothing quite as disappointing as standing witness to a topic that excludes oneself. May as well just hide here in the bathroom until the conversation realigns itself. She has a drink and everything...

...Kiko starts to realize something: things haven't changed. She was a shy wallflower as her old self; she's a shy wallflower as her new self. She lacked conviction as her old self; her attempts at conviction have come up short and now, she's hiding from her one and true destined love in his bathroom. She just wants to be special and all she has proven is just how little she means. 'Below the average of the regular military'. King Mickey's regular military vets over 50 million recruits each year; she apparently isn't even as good as half of them.

So what has changed? Her body? Her home? Her role? Meaningless. All meaningless. She wants to be a hero; she gets shuffled into the background. 'Tourist'. She wants Riku as her boyfriend; he has only grown more disdainful, less considerate, and ever ruder with every passing day. 'Creepy'. She wants friends; she has none. 'Outsider'. Sure, Sora and Kairi are friendly, but she can see through the thin veneer covering their distrust. At least back in the old universe, she had a friend in Jamie... oh, to only speak with her again. She would have ever so much advice. Alas, it is not meant to be.

Five minutes. The closest anyone has ever tried to get is Chou, but she has screwed even that up. Sure, she'd love to believe Chou's just going through a phase, but even those had longing glances and a persistent one person buffer during Basic. Now, she always favors the end furthest from Kiko and never looks her way. She used to pretend that she was capable of building muscle mass even though she never progressed past a 90 pound bench. It was almost kind of cute to see her come in every once in a while and just stare from her unchanging machines... she just walked by without so much as a glance the other day. It's over.

Eight minutes. Someone, probably Sora, must have noticed her absence by now. Balance time: does she or does she not use the toilet? Those forty seconds might be vital... well, she can't walk out with misty eyes. Toilet it is. She gets it over with in less than thirty, eyes dry but still a little red. Whatever. They won't notice. She walks out the bedroom-side door, passing the two regal guests back into the main room.

"Thank you, General Mithas," the television drones, "Former Commander, now Captain Eades..."

"Oh, there you are," Sora says with a glance, making an inviting gesture, "We were just talking about Uina. What do you think yu-cope should do with him?"

"Yu-cope?" Kiko sounds back, reclaiming her position.

"United Coalition of Planets," Riku sighs with exasperation.

"Oh," Kiko says, looking around at everyone, "I thought he works for King Mickey?"

"He does," Riku continues with irritation, "King Mickey still has to respect the wishes of UCoP if he wants to keep his position. You _still_ haven't read the book?"

"Oh, come down, Riku," Kairi says with a cheerful, innocent punch to the shoulder, "It's your birthday! You don't need to be such a stick in the mud."

"I have read that part of the book, actually..." Kiko explains while looking down at her feet, "Just before I came here, actually. It doesn't talk much about UCoP and King Mickey's position on the Security Council. '68% of the economic resources, 89% of the vehicles, 99% of the weaponry, 91% of the research, and 71% of the training come from King Mickey's contributions.' I read that over and over just in case it came up. That's all it says. It doesn't say how UCoP works or what they can do. You keep going on and on about the book, but it doesn't have everything..."

With this statement comes an uncomfortable silence, the television the only sound. Well, now she's gone and done it: she ruined Riku's sweet seventeenth birthday. Another black mark on her record; perhaps the final one given the weight of the occasion. He had his sweet sixteenth taken by the darkness and now, she has robbed his seventeenth. Even Chou seems to recognize this, wandering off towards the couch without so much as a glance at Kiko. If there was ever proof of Chou's detachment, this is it. This must have reached Riku; he actually looks kind of disappointed in himself... then again, Sora and Kairi are also looking at him with disappointment as well. Probably caused by them.

"...awkward," Riku says, glancing around pensively as Kairi nudges him a little, "...I apologize. It's been a while since I read it and I guess I assumed it has every answer. I suppose UCoP is unimportant to how we operate."

"Well..." Kiko trails off, searching her mind for a distraction, "I think Uina should..."

Riku's flat palm gesture with one hand as he points to the television with the other is as good a reason to shut up as any. Actually more polite than what he would normally do. The television shows Uina in an elaborate business suit standing up as he glances over his PDA, snapping on a collar microphone and adjusting it a little. A couple of the soft pops go through the audio feed as he lightly jerks the wire for comfort. After another quick glance at his tablet computer, he pockets it and assumes his best public speaking stance.

"Thank you for your invitation to today's summit, Secretary-General," Uina starts, motioning towards the center of the room. The camera changes to look at the bearded man proceeding over the events.

"Always an honor, Grandmaster," the man responds, motioning upwards. The camera snaps back to Uina.

"I first came up with the concept of the replicating drones only a month ago," Uina starts, "Yes, I recognize that no robot army in the history of the universe has ever been successful. That's why I designed them without autonomy, with read-only hard drives and a remote explosive in their logic centers set to detonate within 48 hours of the first deployment. My design was flawless and it is the responsibility of the Logic Heuristics, Incorporated for their oversights in the programming."

"Your design is not at the heart of this investigation, Grandmaster," the Secretary-General responds as the camera switches back, "While no doubt a sound design on paper and in the lab, our concern is your total disregard for the field testing stage of development. You admit that it was your first time launching the completed device, yes?"

"Yes, Secretary-General," Uina admits as the camera changes back to him, "I won't deny wrong-doing on my part. It was irresponsible for me to launch all eight foundries without a full set of controlled field tests. The ideal course would have been deploying it on a dead planet upon completion of the prototypes, but it's too late for that now. While I have no way to judge how much damage was caused by my machines compared to the Heartless and the Heavy Behemoths in particular, I estimate it to still be considerable. Certainly, the resources spent to clean up the occupying robot forces are unacceptably high."

"However," Uina counters with a finger in the air, "If I had known what would happen and how much damage it would cause, in the face of the near-unstoppable Heartless army and the threat they posed against our own, I would have still launched the machines. In retrospect, I probably should have only launched two to cover the retreating troops, but I would still launch, nonetheless. The Tourmaline Shamaness, powerful as she may be, isn't omnipotent and thousands of Oni and Rocs at the last stand were grim odds without the robot army."

"General Mithas just reported that the robots didn't arrive until after the final transport was in the air," the Secretary-General comments.

"If I may," Uina continues, "Hindsight is 20/20, but tinted by bias and perspective all the same. As much as we like to talk about what we _should_ have done, it's a fallacy to assume all other events would happen equally with any single change, minor as it may be. While it may appear the robot army arrived too late to affect the retreat, there are too many mitigating factors to assume said retreat could have still happened without the deployment of the machines. While the salvage of data from the machines will take some time, there is reason enough to believe their deployment diverted the Heartless enough to secure the retreat. Their troop lines spanned at least thirty kilometers; it's very possible the robots had already begun to drive through them as early as an hour prior to the final evacuation..."

"Good old Uina," Riku comments, "Unrepentant and evasive to the last."

"He has a point," Sora retorts, "How do we know what would have happened?"

"Eh..." Riku shrugs.

"...tens of thousands of casualties," Uina finishes.

"Noted," the Secretary-General admits, "Is there anything else you wish to add before we continue?"

"No, sir," Uina responds, giving some type of salute with all seriousness.

"You may be seated," the Secretary-General responds, "With the testimonials given by King Mickey, General Mithas, Captain Eades, and Grandmaster Uina, I'm left in an awkward position. Grandmaster's logic may seem sound, but his gross violation of protocol, disregard for collateral damage, and lack of respect for authority over the past decades has been given a blind eye for too long. Because of this prevailing attitude, I am calling forth a vote of action."

The screen changes to some interface displaying percentages, three bars appearing in the middle.

"Three options, anonymous vote," the Secretary-General continues, "First option is a total suspension of Grandmaster Uina's active duty pending full investigation of recent events. Second option is to place him under the governance of the-"

"I object," Uina suddenly interrupts with total calm, a few gasps going through the room, "Technological development does not happen through committees. Ever since their formation seventeen years ago, the Prospective Technologies Council has been a burden on scientists, engineers, and mages the universe over through their bureaucratic red tape and total lack of respect for ingenuity. They-"

"That's enough," the Secretary-General retorts, also calm, "Your numerous outspoken views on the PTC have been duly noted several times over in great detail. While we understand the concerns raised by both you and other members of the scientific communities, now is not the time. If you wish to offer constructive criticism of the council amounting to more than its abolition, the open forum at the end of the week is the place to do so."

"Anyway," the Secretary-General continues, unfazed, "The second option, as implied, is to place the Grandmaster under the governance of the Prospective Technologies Council, complete with sanctions on access to dangerous materials. Third option is no action taken. Is there anything else the Grandmaster wishes to add?"

"Logic Heuristics has as much to do with the failure as me," Uina adds, "If it comes to sanctions and investigations, they should be included for their role in the creation of this flawed design."

"Noted," the Secretary-General exhales, "Voting shall begin... now."

It takes a couple seconds before anything changes on this splash screen. The first bar crawls ever so slightly forward before lurching backwards, the second bar shooting straight forward. The third one barely even registers a blip.

"Wimps," Riku half-jokingly says to the screen. It takes about a minute of total non-action before the screen goes back to the bearded man in the center.

"Okay, then..." the Secretary-General continues, "Final tally is 12 votes suspension, 492 votes sanction, 5 votes non-action. With the power granted in me by the United Coalition of Planets and as liaison of the Prospective Technologies Council, I am placing Grandmaster Uina under involuntary governance of the aforementioned Council pending a full investigation of the events of Malleus V. Before you report to the Prospective Technologies Council for induction, do you have any parting statements?"

"I am just very disappointed with this turn of events," Uina comments, "I have..."

"Finally," Riku exhales with some mixture of relief and vindication, "I thought this day would never come."

"When did you start caring so much?" Sora asks out of the blue.

"When we started working for him," Riku explains, "I don't want to work for him any more. He's a bad tactician and a worse commander. He gives us specific objectives, but doesn't give us any real plans on how to do them. He puts all his faith in single plans with no backups. Worst of all, I don't think he even knows what he wants. What was he going to do with Yami, anyway?"

"I don't know..." Sora says, "Something involving science?"

"Good old science," Riku cynically starts, "You can do _anything_ for _science_. I'm going to ask him next time I see him."

"...appalled by Uina's behavior as you are," Mickey drones, "However..."

"So, Kairi," Riku blurts out, turning around to face the fuchsia-clad girl, "How's the program working out for you?"

"Oh, it's _so_ great," Kairi gushes, "I feel so much better about myself. I can eat as much as I used to and never gain a gram of fat anywhere. I breathe easier, sleep better, and don't get tired as much as I used to."

"It's what I've always said," Riku continues, "Why eat less and feel groggy when you can work more and feel great?"

"...hang on," Kiko interrupts, this line of conversation sinking in, "You have weight issues?"

"Well, yeah," Kairi counters in a matter-of-fact tone.

"But... look at you," Kiko responds, staring at Kairi. It's a bit of a shock to imagine this waifish, almost undernourished girl as ever having anything resembling a 'weight issue'. If anything, she looks like the poster child for anorexia. Sure, she has at least gained some muscle over the past four months, but even that looks forced and artificial. Have to be searching for it to notice.

"Well..." Kairi muses with a sad expression, "After being kidnapped twice and starved close to death both times, I lost most of my fat..."

"I'm sorry," Kiko quickly apologizes, "It's just... you don't look like you've ever _been_ fat a day in your life."

"Well... I..." Kairi looks down, her eyes starting to well up. Kiko tries to think of something to say, but nothing seems to want to come out. What can she really say with so little information? She doesn't know about this period of Kairi's life and she seems to associate her figure with traumatic events involving darkness and despair. What words can possibly comfort her... especially coming from an outsider like Kiko? Riku is glaring daggers and even Sora seems quite disappointed.

"...am calling forth a vote about King Mickey's position as..." the TV drones.

"There, there, it's okay," Sora comforts, hugging Kairi as tears start streaming down her eyes.

"So, Kiko," Riku says as he wrenches his expression back to neutral, "Have you met Stompy yet?"

"She doesn't want to socialize with a commoner like me," Kiko responds. Riku rolls his eyes and holds back a scoff, looking back to Kiko with a focused glare.

"Kiko," Riku starts, closing his eyes with a suppressed frown and unwittingly jittering his arm, "I would like you to go distract yourself somewhere out of our sight for a while. Will you be a good girl and go do that, please?"

"Oh," Kiko says, quickly shuffling out of the apartment and closing the door behind herself. She certainly doesn't need any further clarification than that to see she's not welcome any more. The sudden increase in the TV's volume is only further proof that she's not supposed to hear any of this conversation and Riku somehow expects her to attempt otherwise.

"Final tally is 22 votes suspension, 246 votes joint-alliance, and 241 votes non-action," the TV blares, still not disguising the droll speech pattern, "I have never witnessed so close a vote, but..."

Kiko takes a seat by the guard rail with legs hanging over the side, her life laid bare. Is she just inherently unlikable? She finds frustration in how she pours all her effort into being the best girlfriend, the best soldier, the best person, and all she gets are snippy statements and social isolation. She wishes she could be at least recognized for her effort, but each further attempt at improvement results in a proverbial newspaper smack to the nose. Bad dog... dog might be a good comparison, for that matter. Needy, dependent, always wetting the carpet and chewing the furniture.

Be her true self? What a load of crap. Nobody wants the true Kiko and certainly not the true Emily behind that mask. She was bullied in the old world because of her true self and she certainly doesn't want her new life to end up ruined due to that crap philosophy. Riku's words about being her true self are a load of rubbish coming from someone so exceptional, so powerful, so free. He can afford to be his true self because his true self is a magnificent hero that saved the universe; not a neurotic sack of hormones and worries that always gets hospitalized against things he effortlessly brushes off. A hero to Kiko's zero.

That brings up a big question: what is there to like about her true self? The way she can't talk without alienating others? The way she bungles up even the most basic tasks? Her lack of magic and, thus, lack of power? Her true self is just some ordinary, unexceptional jackoff and a normal person can't enthrall the greatest hero of the universe. No, she needs to be greater than herself. She needs to stop being such a berk and start being a belle. No more speaking except to flatter, no more stupid statements or information prodding, no more attempts at solo heroics against overwhelming odds. Be the best person, the best soldier, the best friend.

"Is this spot taken?" Sora asks from behind. Kiko turns to face, her vision blurring a little. Seems she let her eyes get misty and now, Sora has witnessed it. Fantastic.

"No," Kiko responds, ignoring her wet eyes. If she wipes or whatever, that is an acknowledgement of her vulnerability. As far as anyone can tell, she's just tired... even though it's still morning and there are no classes this week. Sora politely sits down next to her, draping his arms over the lower bar.

"I'm sorry about Riku," Sora says.

"What is there to be sorry about?" Kiko responds, "I snapped at him and asked too many questions about Kairi."

"You were right to stand up to Riku," Sora starts, "He does push you around a lot more than he has to. I was kind of happy you said something, actually. You're just letting him walk all over you and that's just wrong. Also, there was no way you could have known about Kairi. It was wrong of Riku to even bring up the topic with other people around."

"I still can't believe Kairi was ever fat," Kiko remarks.

"She's never been _fat_ fat," Sora explains, "Just kind of... girth fat, really. Thick arms, thick thighs, wide waist. You know... heavy, not fat."

"I think I know what you're talking about," Kiko says.

"I just feel sorry for her," Sora continues, "She's had nothing but problems as long as I've known her. Ever since the Heartless destroyed her world and sent her to us at only four years old, her life's just been one thing after another. Even without her weight problems, she was always kind of an ugly duckling. Nobody wanted to hang out with her and she got picked on all the time. Riku and I got together with her because we just felt sorry seeing her cry all the time. Then the darkness destroyed our world, her heart was tainted but without turning into Heartless, Maleficent kidnapped her... you know... being heavy probably saved her life. She was starved both that time and when Organization XIII held her hostage. She only weighs about half what she used to."

"...why aren't you in there comforting her?" Kiko asks.

"She locked herself in the bathroom," Sora answers, "When she gets like that, it's just best to step back and let her work it through."

"Oh," Kiko says, knowing the feeling all too well.

"I think the worst thing for her is what Riku and I became," Sora continues, "While we all became something special, she got the short straw. Riku and I got opposing keyblades that grant us extraordinary strength, the ability to defy physics, and magical power over the elements. Riku has always had dark magical power as long as I've known him... although he always tried to hide it while growing up. I guess even as a kid, he knew how people see darkness as evil. I took up piloting space ships and am apparently quite good at it. King Mickey calls us his best soldiers and while I hate to boast, he's really quite right. Only Riku and I can succeed where a whole army fails."

"Isn't Kairi a 'Princess of Heart' or something, though?" Kiko asks.

"She is," Sora admits, "But here's the thing: it doesn't _do_ anything for her. We like to pretend it makes her special, but it only makes her a target. We're trying to train her to be a sorceress, but she really can't manifest her power over light into anything useful. She can't make it bright enough to blind people, she can't focus it into makeshift lasers, she can't turn it into healing waves like Aerith. What she can do isn't even as good as the standard issue machines. She can imitate a flashlight and flare gun, but not as good as either. She's really only good as an unwilling power source and that's how she has been used both times."

"That sucks," Kiko remarks, starting to lose interest. She can infer the rest of this conversation pretty easily.

"We're trying to train her as a swordsman at her own request," Sora continues, "But she doesn't have the instinct, drive, or athleticism to make it on the battlefield. After four months, she's only just barely able to hold against Shadows while two or more Soldiers still take her down. With our new battlefield involving hulking Oni by the hundred, we can't take her with us."

"So she's just here for her protection?" Kiko asks. Sora gives this knowing glance, one of surprise at such an insight.

"Pretty much," Sora says, going quiet as his face becomes just a little distant and sad. Well, now Kiko has done it: she alienated Sora. To think that on Riku's most special day, she managed to give a good reason for all three of her favorite people to hate her. She stuck up to Riku, she reminded Kairi of her traumatic past, and now, she all but told Sora that Kairi is worthless. It does bring an interesting question, though: how is Kiko the 'worst student' while Kairi is here? Kiko can at least fight through multiple Soldiers...

"...thank you," the TV drones, "First, I want to thank King Mickey for taking the White Stars off our hands. The cults are starting to break apart and..."

"I hate when Riku does this," Sora starts, his expression going back to normal, "Does he really think you're really going to lean into the door to listen?"

"He doesn't trust me," Kiko flatly states.

"He should," Sora starts, a rant starting to form, "He just chooses not to. You should really stop trying to hang out with him. He's no good for you. He just uses you as his emotional punching bag to let off his stress and feel better about himself. He sets up these situations just so he can have a reason to yell at you. He knows you don't really like Chou, but he keeps you with her because he knows you'll do something he can scold you for. He _wants_ to order you around and talk down to you. The worst part is I don't think he even _realizes_ he does this."

"But he's right," Kiko starts, "I _am_ a major screw-up and I _do_ make stupid mista-"

"Stop," Sora interrupts, "Stop thinking you're inferior to him. He may be stronger, more experienced, more powerful, but that does not give him the right to put you down. Don't let him push you around, don't let him talk down to you, don't let him insult you. If he is rude, call him out on it. He has a right to tell you your mistakes; he has no right to make you feel worthless for them."

"Why do you hang out with him, then?" Kiko asks.

"He's a good guy at heart," Sora starts, "He won't let people hurt his friends and he'll never back down against our enemies. He might not be that 'nice' much of the time, but he's loyal and dedicated."

"I suppose..." Kiko says, finding his words kind of doubtful. He must be lying. There's no reason he would hang out with Riku if he really thinks this about him.

"I guess we all have our ways of letting off steam..." Sora waxes philosophical, "He's been on edge lately. We've all been and that's because of this new war brewing... can you keep a secret?"

"...huh?" Kiko says, looking at Sora with some scrutiny.

"Promise not to tell?" Sora asks in a whisper, his expression quite genuine as he leans in.

"...who would I tell it to?" Kiko whispers back, half-cynical but entirely truthful. Who?

"That works," Sora exhales, "Okay, you notice how that broadcast isn't giving any numbers? No casualties, no troop reserves, no role call of the remaining fleets, no production quotas for reconstruction and reinforcements?"

"That's just being smart, isn't it?" Kiko counters, "That is a public TV station across the universe and knowing what sort of troops we have would let them counter with their own."

"See, that's the thing," Sora retorts, "We didn't _have_ to care that much in the past. It was actually to our benefit for them to know because in a straight-up skirmish, we were practically unstoppable. We knew this, they knew this, and because of this, we flaunted it to break their spirit. That's why Maleficent, Xehanort, Organization XIII, and every other marginally successful use of the Heartless were as guerrilla warfare. The Corridors of Darkness may be slow, but they go everywhere and are way too dangerous for anyone but Heartless summoners and dark sorcerers to travel. They would attack worlds too fast for anyone but an operative like myself to respond."

"Isn't that what's happening here, though?" Kiko asks.

"No," Sora starts, "They never stayed to fight with a full force before. If the army arrived, they would just leave behind the leader alongside its most attached underlings and retreat. Sometimes, they would send Heartless to a world just to distract from another plan, but even those usually retreated. The closest to a real assault was the Battle of Radiant Garden, but that was just a botched diversion that went _way_ wrong. No, these attacks are all against the army itself. They're even letting us take the initiative rather than trying to take us by surprise."

"But... King Mickey has all this stuff..." Kiko trails off.

"It's not enough," Sora sighs, "He has it the hardest of all of us. The United Coalition of Planets just voted away his total control if I heard the TV right and it will just take another big failure to be replaced. He's not the first Security Council Commanding General and he won't be the last. Not like he'll ever take away his contributions to the effort, but we'd be taking orders from some new guy. In the meantime, he's had to make some hard decisions. He put a hit out on Dr. Goldwater through the criminal underground for up to 100 million munny and has been in talks with some of the saner groups on Discord. He hasn't announced it yet, but he's going to start sending people from this school with the army."

"Wait... what?" Kiko responds, her voice nearly breaking out of whisper. They can't send the school's members to fight. Not with only partial training against the most fearsome Heartless collective yet. It will be a massacre.

"All of this is to say..." Sora continues, "...we're losing the war."

"How can you say that?!" Kiko blurts out just a little louder than desired, quickly descending back, "I mean... we have you and Riku..."

"We have our limits," Sora sighs, pausing as he listens to the TV.

"...thank you, Ambassador Pimre," that old male voice drones, "Moving right along..."

"Let's just go back in," Sora shrugs, pulling himself up with the top rail and turning around. Kiko follows suit, the two walking into Riku's room. The birthday boy is casually draped on the end of the sofa, drinking a bottle of White Dwarf as he watches the TV with wavering disinterest. Chou appears to have wandered off elsewhere. Perhaps she decided to socialize with the two royals? Kairi's lack of presence and the almost inaudible sobbing coming from the bathroom precludes Chou answering nature's call... did she walk out without Kiko noticing or something?

"Welcome back, Sora," Riku greets, patting the space next to him, "Come on over. I saved you a seat for this exhilarating show."

"Thanks," Sora responds, taking his place. Kiko, not feeling too comfortable between her screw-up and Sora's description, decides to just stand behind the couch for the time being. If she doesn't present herself to Riku, she doesn't have to worry about further ruining herself in his eyes. Besides, the guy on TV is actually more interesting than usual. With grey skin and a thinning plume of white feathers for hair, his wrinkled face contrasts with his sturdy stance. An old alien, but one determined not to lose himself to the ravages of age. His black business suit contrasts with his species, but he wears it as well as he can. Wise, stoic, knowing.

"...the advice of the council," the alien speaks in a lyrical manner, "We have implemented the latest in laws forbidding..."

"You know who that is, Kiko?" Sora asks, taking her by surprise.

"I don't follow politics," Kiko admits.

"That is Payio Jaemo of the Daeh Yeo Mar Empire," Sora explains, "He is a very evil man."

"Now, now," Riku chides with only partial interest, "Remember Maleficent's Revelation?"

"Yes..." Sora sighs with exasperation, an air of repetition inherent, "'There is no good and evil, right and wrong. Only us and them.'"

"Yep," Riku responds, finishing off his bottle and tossing it into the nearby bin.

"I don't get why you keep saying that," Sora says, "Consider the source."

"I have considered the source," Riku casually responds, "It's because it's someone so depraved, so immoral, so thoroughly _against_ us that I repeat it whenever you talk about 'good' and 'evil' like a boy scout. If it was just Yen Sid or someone else on our side, you wouldn't really think about it that much. Just another philosophy to toss to the side. But since it's Maleficent that said it, it really makes you think about what it means. Is it 'wrong' because Maleficent, who is quite clearly 'evil', said it? But then, would the statement 'the sky is blue' be wrong should she say it? Just because Maleficent said it doesn't mean it's false. She might have just used it to justify killing innocents and destroying planets, but there's a truth to it: we are defined not by a universally proven morality, but by the sides we choose. She kills people, we protect people, and the universe does not endorse nor condemn either side."

"Still," Sora continues, "Jaemo endorses the brutality of the empire. Just listen to him."

"...while I understand the council's intent," Jaemo continues, as if by the force of Sora's conviction, "Our system of government cannot be changed immediately. While we recognize our oppression and manipulation as harsh and cold, it is what holds us together and prevents a dozen revolutions causing another century long cycle of bloodshed and tyranny only to result in the same status quo once the destruction dies down. It is only through gradual steps that we can ease back our control and return the will to the people. This is a process that may take several generations to come to fruition, but..."

"He seems fine to me," Riku comments, "He has his people in mind and wants to avoid conflict. You have to keep in mind that you and I are warriors. We live moment to moment, life and death, the battlefield changing by the second. He's a politician and has to live year by year, generation by generation, progressing meter by meter. If he were to just draft a new bill saying 'you are all free to do as you wish', the first thing the workers would do is kill all the politicians and take their place. Besides, there are eleven other people governing their world specifically to avoid something like that from happening. Even if he was at fault, you can't blame all their problems on him alone."

"I don't know..." Sora says, defeated, "I still think he could try harder."

"Leave the wars to the warriors and the politics to the politicians," Riku states, focusing his attention on the television. He seems pretty content with what he just said and Sora, defiant as he may be, seems to no longer desire this debate.

"...ever since the final unification six years ago," Jaemo says, "The soldier caste has been sitting around, unused, bored, restless. With no more wars to fight in our territory, their lifestyle is gradually decaying and their morale sinking. That is why for the past year, I have put forth as much effort as possible to gain the full sponsorship of the United Coalition of Planets. With our membership secure, voting status instated, and council suggested reforms forthcoming, I no longer feel my proposal controversial or unreasonable. I have already discussed the matter with Secretary-General Johann Baum, Commanding General King Mickey and other voting members of the Security Council, and the representatives of the twenty six recruiting worlds..."

"No..." Sora says in disbelief as he leans in a little towards the TV.

"...I," Jaemo states with conviction, arm held crossed against his chest, "Payio Jaemo, representative of the Daeh Yeo Mar Empire, with the blessings of the Daeh Grand Council and the full soldier caste, submit my proposal that the Daeh Yeo Mar Empire be inducted into the Security Council and enter the alliance in its pursuit of universal peace and the suppression of the Heartless and those who would employ them to spread their terror and oppression."

"A noble proposition," the Secretary-General comments as the screen changes to a two bar display, "We shall hold an anonymous support/decline voting on the issue... now."

"No, no, no, no, no..." Sora repeats with a mixture of shock and disgust, the top bar filling up a lot faster than the lower.

"I guess your vision came true after all, Kiko," Riku comments, unfazed by these events as he cracks open another bottle of White Dwarf. The screen settles on 99% support, 1% decline for a minute before going back to the Secretary-General.

"Final tally is 504 support, 4 decline," notes the Secretary-General, "While I don't have to say anything more than 'welcome to the Security Council', I feel I can speak for everyone short of the four dissenting members when I say we hold the Yeo doctrine of war in the highest respect and are greatly honored by your decision to join the council."

"Dammit, dammit, dammit," Sora rants, punching into the couch cushion with each word. Riku glares at Sora for a second before shrugging and turning back to the television.

"...I am looking forward to working alongside the Yeo military," Mickey states with his fullest confidence, "Through our undivided unity, we shall overcome the Heartless threat and bring peace to the universe..."


	63. Toasty

With this new alliance comes a veritable tempest of events, each one simultaneously grander and yet more expected than the last. It's perhaps a certain irony that the most outlandish event, the one that fills Kiko with shock, dread, and apprehension, is the one she already knew was coming:

"...in spite of our new Yeo comrades," resonated King Mickey's broadcast nearly a week ago, "Gravely high casualties and the severe crippling of our armada have brought an unfortunate reality upon us: we need heroes. Heroes like Sora and Riku, heroes like the Tourmaline Shamaness and the Runi Sisters, heroes... like _you_. Each and every one of you were scouted out and brought into this school for training independent of the military because each and every one of you, my most dedicated pupils, have that chutzpah, that audacity, that right stuff, that je ne sais quoi... that _quality_ possessed not by the average layman, but by the grandest hero. That is why I call upon each and every one of you to stand up and be counted..."

Kiko shudders to even think about this turn of events. It is impulsive, short-sighted, and desperate. It fills her with fear and yet, standing amongst her peers in this rally, it shows just how alone she is in her thoughts. Nobody else seems to find this turn questionable; in fact, they embrace it. Some talk about finally getting into the action, others boast about their goals in headcounts, and some even wish for a Heartless attack to happen as soon as possible to get them on the field of glorious battle. Even the softer people like Chou and Kairi are unfazed.

Without breaking formation but perhaps violating its purpose, Kiko glances down to the end of the great yellow hallway. Past the nearly two hundred people side by side in two parallel, opposing lines stand King Mickey and a group of Yeo... 'Birds', as the common speak insultingly identifies. As it turns out, Sora and Eades are far from the only people with a distaste for the empire and its people. If the broadcast calling to arms was met with near-universal triumph, the broadcast announcing the alliance was met with the opposite.

"They have their culture and we have our's," Riku would assure in the face of overwhelming dissent. Just like him to stand alone against everybody else. Kiko finds herself lucky to not have any real opinion on the matter. She can only imagine how hard the next step after the alliance feels:

"With our Daeh comrades fully integrated to the military," King Mickey announced not even a day after the first, "We shall expand the school's roster by three faculty members and one hundred students. Two teachers and twenty six students, all Yeo, will be inducted at the beginning of the next semester. Over the next month, we shall continue our recruitment drive and bring about our forthcoming Combat Engineering branch of study..."

And true to his word, here they are. Twenty eight Yeo, two adults and the rest quite a bit younger, all of them wearing these minimalistic harnesses, scrappy weapons slung across their backs, and proud expressions on their faces. Taking the first proactive step in preparing for this alliance, Kiko has been reading up on the Yeo military the past few days. Certainly no scolding from Riku for not knowing this or that. She can be the expert for a change.

It is to her surprise that she finds them quite fascinating. She has always believed that the whole point behind a military is to lose oneself to the greater whole; a cog in the war machine. Not with the Daeh Yeo Mar. They prize individuality and encourage personal expression. At their coming of age, they are allowed to train however they want, as hard as they want, and towards whatever goal they want so long as they can perform within an acceptable range. Only at the start of battle are they given rough outlines and objectives, their synergy bouncing off each other to great effect. 'To each, an army in their own right'.

This philosophy extends down to their equipment. Succinctly put, they don't mass manufacture anything they equip. Each one is a gunsmith, a blacksmith, and an armorer all at once. No two guns are the same and as inferior as they seem compared to Uina's designs, they seem to work much better with their tailor designs to each soldier's desires. Their only limit is their choice of ammunition, but even that has led to some interesting combinations. Joint barrels, twisting rounds, simultaneous impacts both incendiary and cryogenic... nothing is set in stone. Ingenuity on the scale of the whole army.

In spite of her respect for this doctrine, she's still apprehensive about King Mickey's desire to adopt it into this school's choice of programs. The thought of learning weapon crafting and engineering just to be a soldier seems excessive. If anything, it works for the Yeo because the soldier caste spend their whole lives learning the trade. The estimated one to four years of training this school offers can't possibly be good enough for people that spent their lives convinced it is beyond their capability.

Still, King Mickey has his two new teachers beside him as he discusses his new plans, the other faculty standing aside respectfully. Their ranks aren't quite as rigid as the students, but they've already proven themselves worthy of leniency. For whatever reason, Uina isn't amongst them. Maybe not that tragic, but curious. It only takes another minute before Mickey walks over to the end of the student ranks with his two new teachers by his side, the twenty six Yeo students forming up into four lines perpendicular to the regular student body. Mickey pulls out a microphone and starts to speak through a booming public announcement system.

"Welcome, heroes," Mickey starts in a magnanimous tone, "to the second semester of your training. I am proud of each and every one of you for the progress you have all made over the past eighteen weeks. It fills me with pride to see each and every one of you here on this momentous day."

"Now," Mickey continues, starting a pace down the lines, "I know there's some disagreement with the alliance. I know there are lingering feelings of animosity towards the Daeh Yeo Mar Empire and its people. Centuries of misunderstood, grossly exaggerated, and downright fabricated reports of brutality and hostility have painted them in an unsympathetic light, but like many other cases of prejudice, there is only a small kernel of truth buried under hyperbole. Yes, there is class struggle enforced through physical abuse, but to believe it as the law governing all of their behavior is wrong."

"During my conferences," Mickey continues, "I have met some of the most honorable people the universe has ever seen. These are not brutal dictators, but normal people with the less-than-enviable task of reforming a violent civilization that has always been on the brink of madness. It is unfortunate that such extreme measures have to be taken to insure a safe transition to a top-to-bottom democracy, but they are doing the best given dire circumstances. Just like us."

"As my previous video brought up," Mickey still continues, "I have decided to add the 'Mar' philosophy as a path for those who wish to adopt it. The full details were made available on the site and I trust those considering it to seek out their adviser. Moving right along, I would like to introduce the first of our newest teachers: Colonel Maiyi Pahr."

The smaller of the two adult Yeo approaches Mickey, still dwarfing the latter by a good measure. Kiko finds little to distinguish this alien from his companion outside of his wargear. Both are grey skinned, white feathered aliens of slim build and inconsistent complexion. The expression 'can't tell them apart', prejudiced as it is, applies here. It's going to be a while before Kiko learns their traits.

Regardless, their philosophy states that the choice and design of their gear says more about their personality than any number of hours spent in conversation. With that in mind, it's hard to pin this guy down. His armor consists of a harness, covering only his chest and crotch. Pouches of metal tools hang off the straps, offering a kind of improvised armor that does little for protection. In contrast to his streamlined, sculpted features is his bulky, confused gun. Does it want to be a sniper rifle or a grenade launcher? Because it can't seem to make up its mind. Mix and match pieces held together by duct tape give a patchwork appearance; perhaps a reflection upon the wielder himself?

"Thank you, commanding general," Colonel Pahr says as he takes the microphone with one arm and crosses the other across his chest, "Well, then... I prepared a speech, but I'm not even sure if I need it. I'm surrounded by genuine badasses, the brightest of the bright, full of spunk, audacity, _mar_. Each of you an army in your own right. I suppose I can instead talk about myself and what I hope to offer."

"When King Mickey approached the Grand Mar with plans to expand this school's doctrine," Pahr continues as he makes these wild, grandiose, indecipherable gestures, "I jumped at the chance to join the faculty. It has always been my disappointment that the average human soldier relies so heavily upon the designs of others. While Grandmaster's designs are solid, they force the soldiers to adapt to them rather than the other way around. How can one exceed as a soldier if held by the shackles of everybody else?"

"That is why I signed on as your new Gunsmithing teacher," Pahr declares, "Those who take my class shall learn how guns work, why they work, and how to build your own. For the first semester, we will start with one of Grandmaster's designs and work backwards, replacing each piece with one of our own design until nothing of the original remains. In the second semester, we will take away all reference and re-build rifles using only the notes from the first semester I approve. With each iteration of the class, I will restrict your notes and expect a greater departure from the original design. By the third semester, we will be creating other types of weapons with no notes and as little guidance as possible."

"As a required complement to this course," Pahr continues, "I am also teaching Handgun, Submachinegun, Rifle, Sniper, and Heavy Firearms Training. First semester students will all be required to take Rifle before branching off for the second semester. All other firearms courses by other professors are banned while taking my courses. No disrespect to the fine teachers, but they do not subscribe to the Yeo way. I urge all interested in my courses to talk with the transfer students or sit in for my practice sessions. I am looking forward to teaching this course and hope to see as many of you as possible."

"Thank you," King Mickey says, barely audible as Pahr hands the microphone back, "Colonel Pahr has nearly forty years of service and sixteen years of teaching experience under his belt. An honored and distinguished member of the Daeh Yeo Mar military, he stands as one of the finest combat engineers in the universe. Moving on, I'd like to introduce the second of our new teachers: Major Chiaspree Kaehr."

"Thank you, commanding general," Major Kaehr says as he takes the microphone with that same salute as his companion. Unlike his comrade, he has a full set of patchwork clothes complete with boots. Short sleeves and midriff exposed, but still clothes beyond function. A mixture of reds permeate the outfit, broken up by the pale leather harness. More traditional armor plates cover the shoulders and thighs, red paint chipped and faded. His weaponry consists of a cleaner gun along with flat slab, full metal knives. He looks more sensible, but less spontaneous. Great on the winning side; bad on the losing side.

"I'm so happy to see so many people here," Kaehr continues, "It's just so overwhelming to be in the presence of so many _humans_. It fills me with joy and uncertainty to think I'm going to be teaching many of you in the Yeo arts. I only hope I can live up to your high standards. I know many of you hate us, but please: give us a chance. We have more in common than you think."

"Similar to my comrade and long-time friend Colonel Pahr," Kaehr diverges as he starts walking down the line in Kiko's general direction, "I also feel institutional education and inflexible regiments are constricting the soul of a warrior. I could go on and on over the topic, but that's not why I'm here. Let's talk about what I promise, shall we?"

"To all who join my classes," Kaehr continues as he passes by Kiko, "I promise strength, fortitude, flexibility, caprice, and, most of all, _mar_. Those who join my Blacksmithing class shall learn to create the sharpest machete, the bluntest flail, the nimblest javelin. Those who join my Armorsmithing class shall learn not only to create the most durable armor, but also just enough of it towards sufficiency without even a millimeter loss of mobility. But most of all, for all who join my Morning Drills, I promise you glory, respect, honor. I will not bully you. I will not demean you. To me, you are my brethren and each one of you is special..."

"Er..." Mickey cuts in, inaudible over the speakers but quite audible to Kiko, "Why are you being so nice?"

"These are humans, aren't they?" Kaehr comments as he holds the microphone away, "They deserve my respect."

"That's not how a drill sergeant acts," Mickey starts, "You're supposed to discipline, not supplicate. They aren't going to pay you any mind if you pander to them."

"You said to just act normal," Kaehr starts, "They're all 14 and older, right? We don't lay into recruits any more when they reach age 12."

"But by then, you've had ten years to find the bad eggs," Mickey counters.

"This is an elite school, is it not?" Kaehr retorts, "I read the dossier: '200 of the best and the brightest', right?"

"Just treat them like they've been here for... I don't know, four years," Mickey sighs, "If that means treating them like six-year-olds, go for it."

"If you insist, Commanding General," Kaehr says with a quick salute, a dour expression forming on his face as he turns around. He starts a slow stride through the lines, analyzing each of the assembled soldiers with a deep scrutiny. The walk of a man... Yeon that knows what he wants, how he wants it, and finds the whole lot lacking. Kiko tries to remember what the four year mark of the Yeo training brings, but it all seems like a blur to her. Something or other about leading by example over open discussion.

After a few more aimless repetitions, Kaehr comes to a stop in front of Red Hawk. The two stare intently at each other for a little, Kaehr's expression looking a bit tenuous. He eventually glances back to Mickey, the latter making some rolling motion with his hand. Steeling up his expression, Kaehr suddenly shoves Red Hawk back with one hand. Doesn't stick for very long.

"What are _you_ looking at?" Kaehr asks with conviction in his voice, face to face and eye to eye.

"You, obviously," Red Hawk says with a smug grin, "What are _you_ looking at, _bird_?"

"_Oho_," Kaehr retorts, some clicking noise permeating the two syllables, "You think you're better than me, do you? That you can show such disrespect to your superior?"

"I _know_ I am," Red responds, nudging his head forward against Kaehr's, "I eat aliens like you for breakfast."

"Do you?" Kaehr says with righteous indignation, "Such a flippant attitude coming from a squawking fledge like you. Pathetic little pigeon, still nursing your beak with your feathered hands, dreading the molt."

"What the..." Red says through a stifled laugh as he glances around, interrupted as Kaehr suddenly shoves him backwards with a ton of force.

"You think you're so high and mighty?" Kaehr shouts after tossing aside his microphone and weaponry, each question accompanied by a harder shove, "Think yourself an eagle, lord over the fowl of the aviary? Prove it. Prove yourself-"

Red Hawk suddenly swings at Kaehr with all his force, the latter dodging quite effortlessly to the former's side. Fleet of foot, the Yeon quickly sidesteps half a circle around the red hulk before he can even react and drives his elbow right into the kidney area. Unfazed, Red shifts on his heels and throws another wild punch. Kaehr sidesteps it, taking a position below the arm facing forward and grabbing onto the fist with both hands. He redirects the force downwards, flipping Red over his shoulders and slamming him into the ground with a minor shockwave resonating through the air. With Red Hawk lying in his crater, Kaehr straightens his posture and resumes his pace down the ranks.

"Pathetic," Kaehr announces, attempting to make his voice carry through the wide hall, "All of you. Pathetic. Preening, squawking, floundering little-"

"Don't count me out, _alien_!" Red Hawk shouts as he shoves himself back to his feet, raising both hands and smashing down into the ground with all his might. A fissure emanating lava surges towards Kaehr with a certain finality. The Yeon leaps out of the way quite effortlessly, the magical attack breaking the ranks as students dive to the side. Kaehr twists in midair and lands facing Red, a smirk on his face.

"_Oho!_" Kaehr shouts back, "Your true colors revealed. The wannabe eagle turns out a vulture; opportunistic, dishonorable, pathetic. I suppose you're going to claim you were holding back until now, aren't you?"

"I'm not playing around any more!" Red shouts, his face contorted with frustration. Kiko finds some amusement in the thought that he's mad at having his clichéd statement mocked before the fact, but she's now quite worried at this turn of events. True to everything she has ever heard of the White Stars, he has no concept of collateral damage and seems quite willing to trash this building to prove a point. This will not end well.

"Then I won't, either," Kaehr calls out with total calm, effortlessly kicking his boots off to reveal these sharp, majestic talons where one would expect feet, "Boots are off now. You gonna make a move or what?"

Red Hawk starts a thundering stampede towards the Yeon, fire swirling around his clenched fists and a battle cry reverberating out of his fierce grimace. Kaehr dashes forward towards his opponent, jumping over the forward jab and immediately dodging the followup vertical punch with a graceful aerial twirl. On his way down, Kaehr slashes into Red's back with a talon and jolts backwards before the muffled but anguished cry can escape the latter's clenched teeth. If anything signifies serious intent, it's this. Master Williams starts to walk forward, but stops in response to Mickey's upright arm. This is a decision that will probably bite him in the ass fairly soon.

Rage overcoming him, Red Hawk drives his hands into the ground and starts to tear at the steel support beam. Kiko feels an ever-so-slight shift of weight through her feet as the long metal bar rips through the wood and carpet, half the room ducking as Red twirls the gigantic makeshift club with wild abandon. Given the horrible telegraphing on his part and the agility of his opponent, it's only inevitable for Kaehr to leap over it. Less expected, however, is his follow-up. Rather than merely travel over it, Kaehr latches on with his talons and rides the weapon for the rest of its arc. A bold move, to be certain, and one that brings him angled above and behind his oblivious attacker.

Taking advantage of Red's momentary confusion, Kaehr starts a mad dash down towards his opponent. Perhaps a bit too momentary, with the hulk arcing the weapon into a downwards pound as fire engulfs the beam. The sheer force of the blow combined with the spreading inferno of flames scatters everybody within the room as they dive for dear life. Kiko, a decent distance away from ground zero, merely has to brace herself and cover her eyes from the gale of smoke. After a few quiet seconds, the area clears up to reveal... Kaehr standing on top of the almost-molten steel with a defiant, giddy expression on his barely-singed face.

"You're fast," Kaehr comments dryly, "Maybe there's a falcon lingering in you after all."

"RAAAAHHHHGGGHHH!" screams Red, dropping his end of the beam and rushing forward with fire gathering all around. Kaehr deftly dodges the flurry of blazing punches, culminating in a truly impressive leap over a ground-shaking pound. The Yeon casually leaps off of Red's shoulders, leaving behind a pair of deep gashes that elicit a loud yelp of pain. He finishes his aerial acrobatic by landing at just the same distance he started. A definite display of futility on the side of Red; the only thing that has changed is a new set of wounds.

Kiko finds it kind of funny to see somebody this big and full of magical power so completely helpless against a magicless person not even as large as most of the students... a fact that doesn't seem to escape his comrades. Blue Harrier breaks the already uneasy ranks and starts walking towards the battle, taken aback as Riku tackles and pins him down. Green Falcon starts her faster stride towards her ailing comrade, but Sora takes her down to the metaphorical mat as well. Seems kind of weird for them to be involved, but there must be a good reason for it.

It is only natural that Yellow Kite will not stand idly by as her comrades get pummeled and subdued. Her stride towards the battle doesn't escape Kiko's notice, passing by with nary a concern in the world. Thinking fast, Kiko rushes out of the ranks and tackles the yellow-clad girl.

"Hey!" shouts that shrill voice as the stubborn mage struggles. Kiko wrestles her into a face-down pin, wrenching Yellow Kite's arm into a painful twist just short of dislocation. While she would never admit it, Kiko finds it pretty satisfying to take down someone as high and mighty as this. Certainly, this must be earning her brownie points with Sora and Riku.

Back at ground zero, things are starting to look more desperate for Red Hawk. Half his clothing destroyed and oddly-dry gashes all over contrast with the perfect, unscarred form of Major Chiaspree Kaehr. To think that someone so comparatively small, unempowered by any visible magic and lacking in the alleged hundreds of years of reincarnation, can dominate this battle so thoroughly. Kiko finds it more surprising that she can hold one of them down like this without too much effort. Perhaps the 'White Stars' are all talk after all?

Just as the two ceaseless opponents ready their next round, a booming voice rings out from the speakers.

"That's enough," calls out King Mickey's voice. Kaehr comes to a slow halt as he looks towards his commander, effortlessly dodging Red's continued attacks without breaking his gaze. Kiko was starting to worry about how far Mickey would let this escalating battle go. Unfortunately, while the Yeon follows the orders quite dutifully, his red-clad enemy continues to throw swings at a frenzied pace. Mickey makes a visible sigh as he walks over, fishing out some type of remote-shaped machine and pressing a button to materialize a purple blade on its end. Just as Kaehr dodges backwards a couple paces, Mickey steps in between the two enemies with blade at the ready. Only with this does Red Hawk cease his attack.

"I _will_ have order," Mickey demands to Red's begrudging face, turning around to face Kaehr, "What do you think you're doing?"

"You said to treat them like fourth year Yeo," Kaehr explains, "I'm just setting the pecking order by-"

"Escalating this battle at the expense of everybody's safety?" Mickey interrupts with great irritation. It's around this time that Yellow Kite stops her struggle and lets her body go limp. Submission to Kiko's will.

"He was supposed to yield," Kaehr sighs, "I thought he'd figure it out when I left him behind."

"You kept taunting him," Mickey starts, "What did you expect?"

"You can get off me now," Yellow Kite says with total calm. Kiko glances around at Sora and Riku to find that both have relinquished their holds on the other members of the White Stars. Kiko follows suit.

"...will keep it in mind," Kaehr finishes, taking Mickey's offer of a new microphone as he starts walking towards his weaponry, "As you have all seen, I defeated your greatest warrior without suffering a single cut or bruise. Pathetic to see so much raw talent go to waste. To those who choose to join my class, I promi-"

With absolutely no warning, Red Hawk barrels right through Mickey and punches Kaehr's back with a sickening crack. The Yeon lets out a muffled screech as the impact launches him forward, rolling a couple times on the floor before coming to a painful stop. Red strides with vengeful purpose towards his reeling opponent, following up with a mighty kick just as Kaehr tries to get up. The force launches the Yeon in another short arc with another painful roll on the ground.

Kiko notices Yellow Kite starting a walk towards the battle with electricity forming in her hands, Sora and Riku already tackling the other advancing members. With a sigh, Kiko rushes forward and tackles the sorceress back down. It takes much effort to withstand that short electrical charge before it dissipates with her submission hold; perhaps the so-called sorceress can't handle her own redirected power?

"Nobody disses the White Stars!" Red Hawk declares as he forms an inferno of flames in his hands. Kaehr manages to crawl to his rifle, grabbing the weapon, slamming in a hasty round from his harness, and spinning around to face his opponent. With Red's fists held vertical and ready to crush his enemy, the Yeon shoves his rifle right under the hulk's chin and pulls the trigger.

Kiko finds herself sickened and horrified as Red Hawk's head explodes in a flurry of red and white chunks. It's not so much this that bothers her as the fact that the exact same thing happens to the other three members almost immediately afterwards. She finds her vision go red as the viscous spray of Yellow Kite's head drenches her face. After a couple seconds of collective, awkward calm, the remaining bodies of the White Stars dissolve into sparks of corresponding colors. Kiko sinks right through the body of energy, the sparks fading just as soon as they came. Even the blood vanishes, leaving Kiko clean but with this tainted feeling of filth permeating her skin. She's going to need years of psychiatric counseling after this.

Once again, Kiko finds herself quite alone in her feelings with just a glance around the room. Outside of Kairi, Chou, and some girl she can't remember, everybody else looks only a bit perturbed by this turn of events; quite uninvolved with the senseless violence. One would think that such a young group lacking in battlefield experience would have to hold back their outcry. Perhaps the media really does desensitize people from violence?

More disturbing, however, is Mickey's nonchalant expression. Lacking in surprise and staring passively, he mutters something inaudible under his breath. Focusing on his lip movements, Kiko manages to discern his words and finds it the most shocking reaction that anyone could ever express to such a display:

_In accordance with the prophecy._

"Sir?" Master Williams says as he walks up behind Mickey, the latter breaking out of his almost trance-like state. Business as usual.

"Assembly is over," Mickey says after pulling out a new microphone, "Everybody, head to your rooms until further notice. Dismissed!"

And just like that, everybody starts shuffling out, faculty carrying Kaehr. Nothing to see here, move along. Sora and Riku aren't heading anywhere, so Kiko reasons that she probably shouldn't, either. She doesn't even feel like getting off her knees. Everybody passes by Kiko without so much as a glance as they walk towards the spiral room. Even Chou, her expression caught in some failed suppression of horror, doesn't bother to look at Kiko. It's going to take a while to get used to that. With everybody short of Sora, Riku, and Mickey out of sight, the remaining people congregate on Kiko's position.

"Thank you," Mickey opens.

"...huh?" Kiko responds.

"For staying," Mickey continues, "Saves me the trouble of sending for you."

"Oh..." Kiko says, wracking her mind for an explanation, "...I'm sorry."

"Why?" Mickey asks.

"For getting involved," Kiko starts, "I shoul-"

"It's fine," Mickey diffuses, "You did the right thing. Everything happened as expected. Are you okay?"

"Huh?" Kiko asks.

"Did you hurt your legs?" Mickey follows up.

"...oh," Kiko affirms, standing up with a slight wobble. Nothing quite like those pins and needles.

"Anyway," Mickey starts, motioning towards the spiral room as he starts walking, "Yen Sid will be here within the hour. He wants to talk with you."

"Why me?" Kiko asks, following the group. This conversation is going just a bit fast.

"Well, not really _you_ specifically," Mickey admits, "There was a prophecy that just played out. 'The outsider general will defeat the deathless warriors and the toll will mirror those uninvolved.' I set this all up so there would not be a single person in the building uninvolved."

"'In accordance with the prophecy'..." Kiko mutters in response as the group starts their climb up the spiral walkway.

"Yeah, definitely you," Mickey starts. A couple seconds of silence go by before Kiko decides to prod a little more.

"But why _me_?" Kiko insists.

"Who knows?" Mickey shrugs, "I was just given directions to bring whoever steps forward to him. I was kind of hoping I could just stack it towards Sora and Riku, but here you are. Guess we'll just have to make the most of it."

"...I'm sorry," Kiko responds.

"Why?" Mickey asks.

"Well..." Kiko starts, "I shouldn't have gotten involved. We're supposed to hold the line no matter what."

"Again, no," Mickey retorts, "If there's one thing I want everybody to learn, it's not to be so arbitrary. Maybe you broke the rules, but you did it for the right reasons."

"But now I've messed up your plans," Kiko responds.

"And you were supposed to know about them _how_?" Mickey asks.

"I don't know..." Kiko admits, glancing around to her nearby comrades, "...am I the only one bothered that four people just got killed?"

"Maybe," Mickey starts, "I knew they were doomed the moment I took them in, so it doesn't bother me. How about you, Riku?"

"Meh..." Riku sighs, "I read all the history and news on them, saw their behavior at this school, and no matter how hard I tried, I could find no reason to like them."

"Sora?" Mickey prods.

"Their 'heroics' made the universe a worse place," Sora states, "I knew they'd start a big fight like this sooner or later. It's only just that they lost."

"Why are you bothered by it, Kiko?" Riku starts, "You cold executed a man you didn't even know a few weeks ago."

"He was a really bad man and promised really bad things..." Kiko explains, losing conviction, "...won't they just come back?"

"'Only should they fall in the wrong will the cycle be broken'," Riku recites.

"Oh," Kiko says, no longer caring. If none of the most important people care, why should she? Just go with the flow. She barely even notices their entry into the unmarked office leading to Mickey's private quarters. She should be proud to be invited by someone so important, but she still can't help but feel bothered by all of this. Perhaps it's just some primal feeling awoken by that splatter of blood... who knows?

Just as Mickey starts pushing the filing cabinet, a muffled chirping noise starts emitting from somewhere within his clothing; a very dire one if Sora and Riku's reactions are to be believed. Mickey pulls out a tablet shaped phone, presses a button, and puts it to his ear.

"Joint Commanding General King Mickey here..." Mickey opens as he turns to face a corner, "... oh, dear lord... right... estimated forces?... any summoners or leaders within the vic... right... any motivation? Ransom demands?... of course not... mobilize the military immediately... the entire armada, half the army reserves. Use my list... I'll be providing specialist support... right... best of luck, General."

"Another attack?" Sora asks.

"Of course," Mickey sighs, stuffing the phone back in his pocket and about facing back towards the entrance, "Looks like we'll get to test our new military structure a lot sooner than I planned."

"What's going on?" Kiko dutifully asks, lagging behind a little as the group walks outside. She drifts a little past, not expecting them to just stop immediately on the spiral walkway.

"Heartless attack," Mickey explains, "Same unknown faction as the last several attacks."

"Isn't it Maleficent?" Kiko asks; something she has wanted to do for a while now.

"Most likely," Mickey sighs, "We can't actually attribute it to her or anyone else without direct proof, though. We learned from that mistake with Organization XIII."

"Where is it?" Sora asks.

"The recently settled Daeh Yeo Mar colony," Mickey continues, "I'm concerned about this one. They chose a planet with almost no strategic importance, but huge political importance. They commandeered every single space ship in the system and hunted down every last one of the 20,000 or so colonists. They gave detailed video confirmation of each and every person, complete with timestamping through the Interstellar News Network on a television behind them. We estimate they did all of this in less than three hours. After forcing the leaders to send emergency transmissions, they tied down 5,000 civilians and burnt them alive."

"Holy crap..." Sora comments.

"That's not the sick part, though," Mickey continues, "They put two video cameras on each of their victims and transmitted their deaths to the whole universe. They overlapped with the interview footage each colonist had to undergo before settlement, detailing their personalities, hopes, and dreams. Then they ended with a pre-recorded message, too distorted for us to identify: 'if you think you can save the others, come. We'll be waiting.'"

"...that's messed up," Kiko comments with shock.

"Good old terror tactics," Mickey sighs, "Well, no matter how bad a feeling this latest attack gives me, we can't ignore this. Even if we could write off the population and still sleep at night, there's no way the Daeh Yeo Mar Empire will ignore this. If anything, I'm worried they'll start their counter-attack before we can meet at the rendezvous. We need to act as fast as possible."

"I'll go ready my ship," Sora offers, "When's lift-off?"

"Half an hour," Mickey declares, "I'm making the announcement when I get upstairs. Riku, Kiko, meet in the front hall in ten minutes. Dismissed."

**--**

True to Mickey's word, he manages to get everybody mobilized with just one announcement. He might have said ten minutes, but the training shines through with not a single person arriving more than six minutes after the call. Nice to see nobody is taking this anything short of dead serious. Expediency for all. Considering the great distance most had to travel, it only makes it even more impressive. Must have been running in the halls. With everybody reassembled in the front hall and nary an apparent thought to the incident of less than an hour prior, Mickey takes up a position at the middle and starts talking into a microphone.

"Students of the academy," Mickey starts as he strides with as much chutzpah as a three foot mouse can muster, "My soldiers, my specialists, my heroes: we stand at the precipice of destiny. The darkness has raised its ugly head once more, threatening to tear apart our recently forged alliance with the Daeh Yeo Mar Empire through their barbarism and savagery. Our enemy, the unidentified assailant, have proven themselves depraved, unrepentant, unrelenting. With our main forces depleted and our latest alliance untested, I must call upon each and every one of you to bring forth your greatest expertise, your deepest talent, your grandest ambition to wipe out this villainy that seeks to plunge civilization into chaos and despair."

"However, I must warn you," Mickey continues, his pace slowing just a little, "This is _not_ a drill. Far from it. Training cannot prepare you for what you're about to see. As much as the professors tell you about the horror of the Heartless and those who would use them, even your darkest imagination cannot compare to what you are about to witness. The Unknown Faction opened this latest assault with the indiscriminate immolation of 5,000 innocent civilians, broadcasting each and every gruesome death in sickening detail. They hold 15,000 more hostage and I fully expect them to continue their slaughter right in front of our very eyes. It is not your _body_ they expect to break, but your _will_."

"No matter what terror they throw at you," Mickey continues, "No matter what monstrosity they perform, no matter how cruel or villainous their actions, you must not falter. You must not give in to the despair, the hopelessness, the _sorrow_ they hope to inflict upon us all. You must stand tall, stand strong, stand resilient against the sheer, unmitigated _evil_ that we face. It is only through our solidarity in the name of righteousness that _we_. _Will_. _Be_. _**VICTORIOUS!**_ Now, let's load up and lock in!"

Kiko finds herself internally groaning at this speech as she walks with the masses, but she can see why he makes it. The majority of the students here have never partaken in anything more than local skirmishes with small stakes and many not even that. Considering the track record of the enemy they're about to face, they need to feel like they're part of a greater good, invincible against the atrocity laid before them. She almost wants to buy into it herself, but she must not let herself be caught up with such fanaticism lest she overextend herself. Mickey implies front line glory; her role is in the rear. Through her support, she shall insure the success of the others.

She finds it just a little disappointing to see Riku walk with Chou by his side to this svelte space ship near the outskirts of the premises. It's probably a bit much to expect an invite to Sora's private team, but to think that the pink alien is considered more valuable still riles her just a tad. However, it may not be so much the rejection of Kiko as it is the rejection of Kairi, their long time best friend... who is conspicuously absent from the main group as well. Given Sora's description, it's probably for the better.

Given her interest in Yeo culture and their military doctrine, it's only natural for Kiko to join their group. Perhaps it's only a runner-up to Riku and Sora, heroes of the universe, but it's at least a preference all her own. As the only human amidst the avian aliens, she can already feel the wary stares of those surrounding her; not so much out of prejudice as it is a belief of inferiority and concern of judgment. Still, she presses on, taking an open seat and futzing with the seatbelt as Colonel Pahr approaches.

"Um... hello, large human female," Pahr starts in an apprehensive tone, "While I'm always honored to have a human aboard, do you really want to be here? I'm sure there's plenty of room on the other ships with other humans aboard."

"Yes," Kiko states, "I'm thinking of taking your and... that other guy's classes."

"Oh," Pahr says, his expression and tone lightening, "In that case, please accept my highest compliments. As the first human to express interest in our program, I welcome you on behalf of the Daeh Yeo Mar military as a comrade. I hope you find us worthy of your high standards."

With that, Pahr extends his arm towards Kiko in an inviting manner. She never read up on Yeo customs, so she finds herself just a little confused by this gesture. Is he inviting her to shake his hand? Apprehensive, she extends her own and reaches in to grasp his hand. Before her hand meets his, he extends forward a bit and lightly grasps her wrist. She almost immediately notices how scratchy his skin feels; kind of like a cat's tongue. He gives two short squeezes and holds position for a little afterwards.

"Solidarity through individuality," Pahr recites in a declarative tone, "To each, an army in their own right."

"Um... thanks," Kiko says, retracting her arm as Pahr lets go.

"I'll see if I can get you into our landing team when we reach the rendezvous," Pahr mentions, shuffling towards the cockpit without turning away, "If you need anything, let me know and I'll try my best to accommodate you."

"Thank you," Kiko says, giving a half-hearted salute. Pahr does an impressive looking salute of his own before turning around and walking inside the door. It surprises her to find such a sense of kinship amongst these derided aliens as opposed to her fellow humans outside of Riku and company, but she's still happy to finally have a feeling of respect. Plenty of opportunity in the future for that to come up short, but still. Her elation almost dies down almost as she considers the dire nature of this mission, but here, in this moment, she finally feels welcome. Just the kind of perfect thought to latch onto as she goes to sleep.


	64. Arctic Vacation

One of the great misconceptions of modern American politics is the common belief of politicians as modern aristocrats. While many do enjoy lives of luxury with mansions, private jets, and sixty dollar sandwiches, it's hardly any requirement to run in or even win an election. It may seem inconceivable that anything but a high social elite can possibly lead the country, the simple truth is that the cunning, charisma, and ability to sit in a chair for hours talking about tax reform can be found in people all over the income bracket. Why, some politicians even started out living in poverty within bad neighborhoods, only dreaming to lead their communities one day.

Senator Christopher Billett... is not one of those people. He was born with a lot of money, raised with a lot of money, went to and graduated from Harvard Law School through a lot of money, and ran for state representative with the help of, yes, a lot of money. Rising from representative to senator at age 32, he has since made a healthy career of uncontroversial maintenance of the status quo while gaming the system every bit of the way. Grafts, riders, kickbacks, cronyism, intimidation... anything to insure more money, more power, and more prestige for his family and friends. And with his own modest mansion in Hometown, access to the private jet of his brother's corporation, and the most delicious ham on rye sandwiches on tap, what more could he want?

...except, perhaps, for better behavior from his daughter. Ever since she pummeled a boy in first grade for looking at her funny, she has only grown more violent and sadistic over the years. However, it's not so much that which concerns old Christopher as it is the fact that she's most certainly not just any dumb thug; far from it. Perhaps it's her cunning that prevents the senator from letting her crash and burn, but this latest stunt has brought him to the edge of his tolerance. Because of this, he now waits in the living room along with his daughter's so-called 'friends' for her to come in.

"Um... Mr. Billett..." one of them shyly says.

"Yes, Mary?" the senator responds, only subconsciously putting forth his best face.

"Can't you just call her?" the girl named Mary asks.

"She won't answer if I call," the senator lies, "Please be patient."

"But you haven't even-" Mary starts, the sound of a door slamming interrupting her train of thought. The senator briefly holds a finger in front of his mouth as the sounds of feet shuffling and keys clinking go through a structured routine. Only takes a few seconds until a blonde girl in designer clothing strides within view.

"Hello, Dana," the senator greets in a calm, inviting voice. Dana's step stutters just a little as she comes to a stop, looking over in confusion.

"Hi, daddy..." Dana says, holding back her discomfort.

"Have a minute?" the senator asks, holding up a bottle of Cherry 7-Up between his fingers, "I have your favorite drink and everything."

"Um... sure," Dana reluctantly says, walking over while surveying the room. Even without her cunning, the presence of her inner circle and the tape deck on the coffee table in front of the television is a pretty big tip that something isn't quite right. Still, given the friendly demeanor of dear old dad, she puts on her best friendly face as she takes the bottle of processed sugar water and sits down in the free chair.

"...shouldn't you be at that conference in Ocean City?" Dana asks, politely opening her drink.

"I canceled," the senator states, "It wasn't that important, anyway."

"That's just weird," Dana states, looking around at her equally confused friends, "What's going on?"

"Take a look," the senator says, pulling out two remotes and firing up the entertainment system. After a few seconds of untaped nothing, a jittery image of a parking lot near a brick building pops onto the screen. The sun is just about done for the day and the only cars in sight are a dark red BMW convertible and a black Acura TSX. The former car has two girls, one black haired and one red. Looks of anticipation adorn their faces as they watch the entrance.

"Testing, one two, one two," says a male voice, "Alright. My name is Michael Selacia, teacher at the Hometown High School. The time is 20:27, October 17th, 2008. I'm at the west parking lot, row 8, position 20. Let's get a better look at the people in the car..."

As the camera zooms in to reveal two of the very girls sitting in the living room, the color starts to drain out of Dana's face.

"Where did you-" Dana starts.

"Shhhhhh..." the senator cuts in.

"The one in the driver's seat is Tammy Picouet," the voice continues, panning from one extreme close-up of a face to the other, "The one in the passenger seat is Jennifer Calkins. Both are juniors on the cheerleading squad... although not particularly good cheerleaders."

"Hey..." one of the girls says, quickly silencing herself at the glances of the others.

"The car is a 2007 BMW 328i convertible, owned by Dana Billett," the voice continues, panning down to the license plate, "You'll notice the license plates don't line up to the car. I don't know where they stole them from, but the actual license plate as registered with the school is M33 N709. Nice of the senator to buy such an expensive car for her sweet sixteen. Sets realistic expectations for the world."

"Dad, seriously, how-" Dana attempts again.

"Good part's coming up," the senator interrupts.

"Time is now 20:29 and..." the voice trails off, the camera panning over to the door as a girl takes position just outside, "Okay, there's Marilyn Blazek. You know, I may not know much about fashion, but I do have to say that the black stage outfits aren't too flattering... whoop, there's a ski mask in 60 degree weather. Something's definitely up..."

Within seconds, the door opens to reveal a fairly geeky, nondescript boy carrying a tote bag. It takes almost no time at all for a feminine figure in black to rush from out of sight and tackle the boy. A struggle takes place as the masked girl tries to wrestle him down, a lucky elbow in the breasts stunning her just long enough to break free. The boy makes a dash for it, the other masked girl rushing out and punching him in the gut as hard as she can. The boy staggers, but gets more than enough time to recover as the girl grabs her hand and lets off a yelp of pain. Looks like the punch hurt her a lot more than it hurt him.

The boy finds his escape cut short as the BMW zooms at him and comes to a stop just a second too late. He finds his body launched into a face-first fall onto the hood, a dull metallic thud ringing out. As he lies there in blinding pain, the unidentified girl on foot approaches with a large bowie knife at the ready.

"What do you-" the boy attempts, a whip of the hilt against his skull silencing him.

"Shut the hell up!" the girl shouts, holding the knife against his throat, "You know what this is?"

"A knife to put John Rambo to shame and prove Freud's theories correct?" the male voice dryly comments.

The boy makes some incomprehensible pleads as he is forcefully dragged up and towards the trunk. After stuffing him inside with little care for his skeletal structure, the two outside girls quickly shuffle into the car and start driving off. The camera bobbles around a bit until the senator presses a button on the remote. Turning off the TV, he looks at the shocked girls with a disappointed expression on his face. About a minute of awkward silence goes by before anyone dares to make a sound.

"...how much did he record?" Mary sheepishly asks.

"More than enough," the senator states, "I'm not going to comment on what you did; I think your actions speak loud enough. There's enough evidence in just this video alone to get you all convicted of _real world_ crimes."

"I'm so sorry!" Mary blurts out.

"Don't," the senator responds, "I am not here to lecture you; I'm here to discuss your options. You see, I recognize this as a pretty big lapse of judgment; gigantic, in fact. However, it's not the fact that you did this as it is the fact that you got caught on highly incriminating video that bothers me. I don't know if you were thinking that kidnapping, battery, torture, and... gross invasion of privacy are just school matters with the usual slap on the wrist from the dean, but let me assure you that no school board leniency can get you off the hook."

"I-" Mary attempts.

"_However_," the senator interrupts, "You _do_ have a way out. I can get all this erased, but it's going to take time and you need to make some promises. You all with me?"

"Yes!" Mary blurts out. Everybody else just nods in silence.

"Okay," the senator continues, "First, promise me you will stop doing _anything_ that could be even slightly considered 'bad' for the rest of the semester. No more bullying, no more pranks, no more gossip, _nothing_. You will all be _model students_ for the next several weeks until winter break. You think you can handle this?"

"Yes," Mary says, still sounding desperate.

"Tammy?" the senator asks as he turns to face the black-haired girl.

"Yes," Tammy promises.

"Jennifer?" the senator asks.

"Yes," Jennifer promises.

"Second," the senator continues, "None of you are to talk about this to _anyone_ but me. Don't even talk about it amongst yourselves. If anybody else approaches you, do not say _anything_. Tell them you have no idea what they're talking about, act insulted if they accuse you of anything, and tell them they're making you feel uncomfortable. Don't deny anything specifically; you have no idea how many people incriminate themselves by accidentally filling in details. Think you can all handle this?"

"Yes," the girls say in unison.

"Finally," the senator says, picking up a nearby tea tray and holding it out, "Hand over your cell phones and PDAs."

Dana's friends all fish out their cell phones, plopping their iPhones and Blackberries on the tray with muffled clinks. The senator swivels the tray to his daughter.

"You, too, Dana," the senator states. The blonde gives an audible sigh as she fishes out an iPhone and hands it over. The senator rises out of his seat, walks over to the fireplace, slides the collection inside, and presses a button to start up a roaring flame. Dana's friends all gasp pretty loudly at the sight.

"What are you _doing?!_" Tammy asks, shocked.

"Consider your phones the price of staying out of jail," the senator flatly states, heading back to his chair.

"But _why?!_" Tammy insists.

"Mr. Selacia found out about your plan _somehow_," the senator retorts, "Better safe than sorry. Anyway, I think that covers it. Have a safe trip and remember: not a word."

"Yes, sir," Mary says, walking towards the front hall. Tammy and Jennifer follow suit, leaving Dana alone for some time with dear old dad.

"Dana," the senator calmly states.

"What?" Dana asks, apparently trying to think of a way out.

"I know we don't talk about the future much," the senator continues, "I know you're undecided on what college you want to go to. I know you don't want to go to Harvard for some reason even though we have a family legacy there. I respect that. I know you don't really want to go into politics or business like the generations before you and I respect that. Even though you have more than enough intelligence for either path, I am willing to let you choose your own. But let me ask you: do you just want to be a hooligan for the rest of your life?"

"...what?" Dana responds, stunned. A pale, black-haired girl in a flowing black dress walks in from the hallway, taking a seat on the empty couch without anybody batting an eye.

"Because that's what you are," the senator states.

"How dare yo-" Dana starts.

"I have tolerated your behavior long enough," the senator interrupts in a righteous tone, "It's one thing to pull pranks and bully people within the school; the board and I have an understanding where I keep up donations so long as your record is kept clean. Nobody cares about that. No. It's another thing to plot a damn _conspiracy_ that involves such... _depravity_. I had to sit and _watch_ the end result of our family's political dynasty... my own flesh and blood... _unfold_ on that television screen. I'm going to have to live with those images for the rest of my life."

"Oh, like you don't ruin more lives for worse reasons..." Dana says, self-righteous. The girl in black makes some inviting gesture to a random area, her eyes staring intently into space.

"Come on out," the girl in black commands to nobody in particular, "Argument of the century brewing here."

"...not a common _hooligan_!" the senator continues, "I am an _elected senator _of_ the United States of America_ and just because I frequently do things in the interest of..."

"Master your illusion," the girl in black says with a certain authority.

"...stop," the senator says, holding his hand up while looking away, "I don't want to hear your justification. This line isn't going anywhere and we both know it..."

"Oh, hey, didn't notice you there," the girl in black says, turning to face the hallway. Standing there with a certain cluelessness is a vaguely feminine figure, undetailed, indistinct, unsubstantial. It's the kind of apparition that feels like it could vanish into the ether at the slightest touch. The girl in black gives a smirk as she stands up and walks over.

"...I'm not going to carry you forever..." the senator drones.

"The first step is always the hardest," the girl states, stopping less than a meter in front of the figure and clasping her hands under her chin, "I'm so proud of you. You really _do_ have the potential to surpass your limits."

"...I was _really_ _careful_ to cover my tracks..." Dana declares, indignant.

"You know..." the girl in black continues, glancing over at the argument, "I used to think Dana was always just a horrible person, but seeing this, I can't help but wonder where she went wrong. She obviously has a lot going for her. She's smart, she's attractive, she's charismatic, she's in great shape... and yet, she focuses all her energy on short-lived elitism and petty thuggery. Why?"

"...again, I am not bitter that you rejected the private schools..." the senator continues.

"I guess it might be her climate," the girl muses, starting a stride over to the bickering pair, "Raised amongst amoral politicians and executives, learning from example that the desires of the family outweigh the needs of the many. People who focus so much on their outward appearance and social power to hide the rotting core that is their personality. Combined with little punishment or moral guidance, it's no wonder she has turned into this."

"...evidence filing clerk to misfile..." the senator continues.

"Of course..." the girl continues, face to face with Dana as she stares deeply into her unaware eyes, "Who is to say she would be as smart, charismatic, in shape, or even attractive if she had morality placed upon her? Who is to say you wouldn't have her beauty, brawn, and brains if you were born into that family? Of course, you'd also probably be just as cruel as her..."

"...and again..." the senator drones.

"Come on..." the girl continues, looking over her shoulder towards the figure, "You have no opinion on this matter? You are going to let me tell you that you can't be both glamorous and a 'good guy' at the same time? Or... what? Can't speak?"

"..._thank you_," Dana says with great irritation, her wild gesture of indignation suddenly slowing down to a full, awkward stop.

"I think we've seen enough of these people," the girl declares, holding out her open palm. Almost immediately, an inky blackness drips out of the hand and ripples across the room. Unaware of even basic physics, the substance washes over the objects with a completely linear, uninterrupted flow; kind of a computerized look, almost. As the wake of the ripples die down, the pure sheen on the surface dissolves to reveal a greyscale version of the scene, lifeless, colorless. The girl in black places her hands on Dana and the senator, their touch detonating both into a flurry of ash. Even that does not last for very long, fading into nothingness as the girl turns to face the abstract figure.

"Come," the girl commands, holding her arms forward and her hands limp, "Maybe talking is beyond you, but walking isn't. You've taken that first figurative step into your dreamscape; now take your first literal one."

The formless figure continues to stand in place, immobile, unemotive, unresponsive. A colorless, undetailed statue, incapable of anything resembling life. The girl in black gives a smile that looks artificial and menacing, yet obviously isn't intended as such. The quiet innocence of a child imitating those around them and yet, given her demeanor, one finds even that idea just a little disturbing. The girl takes a graceful step towards the figure, waving her fingers towards herself.

As if by command, the figure starts to move on its own accord. Each step, its approximation completely alien not only to biology but to the very physics of the universe, causes the figure to refract in a hundred million shards of light as the form expands and contracts in a swirl of color. Even as the flashes pour over the scene, none of it seems to catch the objects. The girl in black smiles even wider as she walks towards the figure at the same pace, stopping half a pace away.

"There we are," the girl says, smiling even wider, "_There's_ your potential shining through."

Without warning, the girl lifts the figure's hands up, pulls it in gently, and brings the head in contact with her own. Patches around the figure's skin in contact with the girl gain some detail, a fleshy color and texture of indeterminate quality. With their eyes in contact, the girl starts a soft melody that rings out through the depths of this alien realm:

_Imagine me and you - I do  
I think about you day and night - it's only right  
To think about the girl you love - and hold her tight__  
So hap-pyyyy, to-geth-errrrrrr~_

With that, the girl starts rubbing her cheek against that of the figure, the patch of detail shifting around to match. With as sudden and unexpected a movement as the last, the girl flings the figure towards her and embraces with all her might. More patches of detail illuminate all over the figure as the girl lightly fondles the figure, making some kind of satisfied sound. It takes ages before the girl finally settles into a long pause of silence.

"Sora's right, you know," the girl whispers into the figure's ear, "You _are_ losing the war and in a few hours, you're going to see the biggest military disaster in the history of the universe."

The girl's smile turns into a rather sinister smirk as she digs her fingernails into the figure's skin. A trickle of blood starts to flow from the wounds, losing their detail and evaporating before they can hit the ground.

"The Bird colony is doomed," the girl continues in a dire tone, "Your efforts to save it will be in vain. Not a single colonist is coming out alive and, in fact, trying to rescue them will be your downfall. At the apex of the battle, the planet's core will be compromised and Darkside will arise from its slumber to once again claim a world as its own. And despite all efforts to escape the failing planet, darkness swarming and devouring the land around you, nobody but you, your darling but oh-so-incompatible Riku, and a single ship of Birds is going to escape that Heartless apocalypse."

The room starts to warp and twist as the objects gradually lose their detail and break apart. A vortex of swirling color, blinding and searing, starts to become visible through the gradually vanishing floor.

"But it's not all bad," the girl continues, her voice now carrying an ironic glee, "Those still on the surface, enveloped by the darkness as the world fails, will be flung through the Corridors of Darkness to the far reaches of the universe. Most will not survive the journey, but you'll be happy to find that amongst those rare few who find their way home, Sora will be one of them. Sure, it will take him a week to find his hero's return... or is that a week after he discovers the artifact? I can't recall... well, neither will take more than a week each. Still, millions upon millions are going to die and you know what the best part is?"

The girl flings the figure backwards, grabs its arms, and yanks it back in. She burrows her face into that of the figure, eyes glaring and a wicked smile baring her teeth.

"There is _nothing_ you can do to stop this," the girl declares, her voice ringing with a malicious glee as she shoves the figure backwards. With that one action, the whole realm starts to break apart into a cacophony of color and light. The ground shatters into constantly refracting glass, the figure falling down towards the vortex with an unnatural lethargy. As the figure sinks towards its demise, smoky tendrils of darkness start to form around the limbs and out the back of the girl. One final flash of the purple eyes is the last visible thing before the entire realm implodes in a whirlpool of blinding light.

**--**

Kiko wakes up with a gasp, cold sweat drenching her body... again. She's starting to find this awakening quite tiresome, but it's not like she really has any control over it. Wiping the glare from her eyes, she glances around the cabin. Steel girders, grated floors, and rows of black leather seats full of Yeo soldiers. Some have books, some have handheld video games, some are fiddling with their weapons; normal people all around. Kind of surprising given their lifelong training and dogmatic attitude to combat, but then again, a person is defined by what they are in their free time.

Remembering her vision, Kiko unbuckles herself and starts towards the cockpit. She can't let such a huge disaster devastate her side. Not only would it be wrong to stand idle and allow 'millions upon millions' to die, but where will she go? She can't imagine it would take too long after such a defeat for Maleficent... or whoever to gain control over the universe. No, she will not let that happen. She opens the door to the cockpit, revealing Colonel Pahr and a couple Yeon talking about something or other at a table.

"Oh," Pahr says, a little surprised, "Hello, honored guest. How may I help you?"

"Um..." Kiko says, unsure of how to phrase her request, "...I need to talk to King Mickey."

"Just like that?" Pahr asks, confused.

"Yes," Kiko asserts.

"I... don't think I have that authority," Pahr admits, "My deepest apologies. I can try to pass a message to him, but he's _really_ busy."

"Um..." Kiko says, thinking about what she should say. In retrospect, there really wasn't a whole lot to the vision she can use. Sure, knowing that the world is doomed and nearly everybody is going to die is useful to a degree, but besides the fact that Darkside is going to show up, she wasn't given anything she can use... maybe that's enough?

"Yes?" Pahr prods, a little confused by the pause.

"Tell him Darkside will show up," Kiko blurts out.

"Darkside?" Pahr asks.

"Yes," Kiko affirms.

"The destroyer of worlds?" Pahr elaborates, "The corrupter, the devourer, the last thing all but the luckiest witnesses ever see in their lives?"

"I guess..." Kiko says, now a little uncomfortable.

"That's pretty big news..." Pahr says, disconcerted, "How do you know this?"

"Um..." Kiko stalls, unsure of how to phrase this revelation, "...I had a vision."

"A vision?" Pahr asks, confused, "You mean a prophecy?"

"I'm not sure..." Kiko admits, looking for an exit from this discussion.

"What's your source?" Pahr asks, his patience starting to waver.

"I don't know..." Kiko admits.

"You _must_ have a source," Pahr prods, "If you saw a real vision of Darkside destroying our world, it's because a spirit showed it to you. Who is your patron spirit?"

"I'm sorry," Kiko says, realizing she really should not tell anyone about her 'patron spirit', "Please forget I said anything."

"_Forget about it?!_" Pahr exclaims, his patience gone as he rises from his seat, "You come in here, tell me you have to talk to the Commanding General, that you had a vision Darkside is going destroy our world and no doubt kill a _lot_ of people, and you want me to _forget about it?!_"

"I'm sorry!" Kiko apologizes, backing up out of fear, "I'm sorry! I don't have a source! I just had a dream where Darkside destroyed the world! I don't have a patron spirit! I'm sorry!"

"...no, no, I'm sorry," Pahr says, calming down, "I should not have snapped at you. Please calm down. Piem, please get our guest a drink."

"I'm fine," Kiko quickly says, now a bit creeped out by the sudden reversal. While she really doesn't want to admit it, he's right: she did come in with dire news and back off from perfectly reasonable questioning. He has every right to be pissed off.

"Again, I'm sorry I yelled at a good human like you," Pahr apologizes, sitting back down, "You won't hold it against us, will you?"

"No..." Kiko says, trying to find an exit from the conversation.

"While I'd like to help you," Pahr starts, "I'd look like a total pigeon to interrupt the Commanding General's tactical meetings to tell him that you had an unsourced vision that might even just be a bad dream. You understand, don't you?"

"Completely," Kiko concedes. Some type of beeping sound cuts into the conversation, the other Yeo at the table rising out of their seats and assuming positions at the controls.

"Looks like we're almost there," Pahr comments, spinning the chair next to him, "You can sit here while we dock. You sure you don't want something to eat?"

"I'm okay," Kiko says, unsure whether or not to take the seat.

"You sure?" Pahr asks, "I have plenty of good human food. Top-shelf sirloin, pasta, potatoes..."

"I'm fine," Kiko repeats.

"High command ordered me to make sure everybody is well-rested and fed..." Pahr says.

"...I'll have the sirloin," Kiko concedes, deciding to take the seat after all.

"I'll whip it right up," Pahr says, spinning and leaping from his chair. Kiko finds it kind of odd to watch as this high ranked official cycles a tray through some type of high-tech microwave for a lowly grunt-in-training like her, but he seems determined to leave a good impression. She may as well play along. It doesn't even take a minute for Pahr to return with a tray of top sirloin steak, green veggies, and some type of bread product.

"Thank you," Kiko says, accepting the tray and taking that polite first bite. While it has that preservative taste, she finds it to be pretty good.

"This is your pilot speaking," one of the Yeo at the control deck says through a P.A. system, "We have been cleared to dock at airlock zero-six-two. Please remain seated and buckled until the ship has come to a full stop. Thank you."

Kiko glances at the screen to see one of the most jaw-dropping sights she has ever witnessed. Looming not far in the distance is this absolutely massive ship, dozens upon dozens of kilometers in any direction. Its black and grey hull sports dozens of branches and hundreds of towers, their arrangement seemingly random and yet fluent. The tiniest squares of light reveal these towers to be skyscrapers in their own right, each one no doubt capable of holding a couple thousand people. Swarms of ships glide in and out, docking and undocking beside the branches. Such a massive machine, its engineering way beyond anything Kiko could ever imagine and yet, she finds herself asking one question: how much does one of these things cost?

The pilots gradually ease the ship towards one of the branches, careful to maintain a perfectly straight path as they travel through the towers. Low rumbles resonate through the hull with each structure that passes by, Kiko's tray inching away with a clatter each time. After several minutes of passing through the gauntlet of towers, Kiko eventually realizes something: this is a city in space. It might be on a mobile platform, but there's no way a good engineer would allow it to be this chaotic.

After a few more towers, a several kilometer wide structure a few stories tall and not even half a kilometer deep come into view. Two support beams suspend it a kilometer above the main hull, dozens of spindly limbs and tubes jutting underneath. The ship comes to a gradual stop underneath one set of these machines, a couple thuds shaking the cabin. After a couple second delay, a loud metallic whining rings through as the ship ever-so-gradually shifts up towards the structure. One final thud followed by a hiss ends this mechanical cacophony.

"This is your pilot speaking," the Yeon at the P.A. continues, "You're free to depart at your pace. Follow the green arrows to the nearest validation room and report in for specialist assignment. Best of luck and to each, an army in their own right."

"Do you still want to join our landing party?" Pahr offers, "We'd be honored to have a human amongst us."

"...yes," Kiko says, nodding her head. No real reason not to; it's either them or some boring humans.

"We're Callsign DYM-S01," Pahr says, offering his hand, "It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss..."

"Kiko," Kiko offers, doing her best attempt at that handshake from earlier.

"Colonel Maiyi Pahr," Pahr offers, subtly correcting Kiko's grip with his own, "I'm looking forward to working alongside you."

"Thank you," Kiko says, retracting her arm and rising out of her seat, "I guess I should get going."

"I'll see you at the briefing," Pahr says with some type of two finger salute.

**--**

Kiko walks out of the ship, her sight overwhelmed with bright lights and motion not even a second after turning the corner. For all her experience with cramped spaceships, it comes as a shock to see such a huge, open area. Practically every surface has a sign of some kind, several different textual languages offering advice and advertising. Dozens of rooms and hundreds of computer consoles are already visible even from the airlock, not a single bit of wall left vacant. Crowds numbering in the hundreds shuffle around as dozens of hovering robots tend to the upkeep of the ship. She'd find herself completely lost in the masses if not for the hovering neon arrows, directing those who know their meaning. Just the sheer size and magnitude of this ship blows Kiko's mind; to think there was a time when O'Hare International Airport seemed massive...

"The United Coalition of Planets Staging Craft _Algernon_ welcomes all new recruits to the Security Force," says an obviously pre-recorded female voice over the booming P.A. system, "Please follow the green arrows to the nearest validation room for orientation and assignment. Thank you and have a nice day."

Without much else to do, Kiko starts following the arrows towards this 'validation room'. She finds it a bit surprising that the floor is so soft, but given how much she has to walk to even get out to the long hallway, it's practically a godsend. Turning to look down the long stretch, she finds the sight of thousands of moving people and hundreds of doors another layer of overwhelming. Were it not for the large, green, neon outlines around the doors to what must be the 'validation rooms', she'd be certain of getting lost even with the arrows directing her.

Not wasting any time, she goes to the nearest room a good city block away and walks inside to find a dozen rows of booths containing computers and some type of vending machine. A sign in a dozen texts directing people to take a vacant booth stands at the front, a grid display of booths marking the vacancies. Kiko heads to the nearest one and steps in, immediately greeted by a relatively simple user interface running a linear program.

Welcome to the United Coalition of Planets Staging Craft _Algernon_. Please scan your identification card to begin.

Simple enough. Kiko fishes out her card and holds it over the nearby black dome. After a few seconds of loading screens, a detailed schematic of her figure pops up along with her profile pictures and some text.

Hello, Brevet-Specialist Kiko. (if this is not you, click here). The _Algernon_ database has you listed as:

Specialist support  
Deep infiltration and reconnaissance  
Surgical assassination

If this information is correct, click here. Otherwise, please contact your commanding officer.

There was once a time when Kiko would balk at these options, but she now knows that she is not meant to lead the glorious charge. Given her lack of magic or other extraordinary ability, she's better suited just staying out of the spotlight. Click.

Please type in your preferred unit or click Auto-Sort to be assigned to one.

Kiko spends just the shortest of seconds contemplating her options before typing in 'DYM-S01' as suggested.

Thank you. Please hold for assignment...

It takes a couple minutes of the blinking period before Kiko starts to wonder if the machine froze. Doesn't seem like it should take this long for an assignment. Glancing around, Kiko thinks about how she can get in contact with Mickey. Even if she can't reveal her source without getting stabbed with a syringe of 'ether mute', she still can't let this go so easily. Before she gets much of a chance to figure anything out, the screen finally changes.

You are now registered to DYM-S01 under Colonel Maiyi Pahr. You have been assigned to:

Spotter team for Etoquin. Second point scout, surgical removal.

Based on this information, the system has assigned the following loadout:

Climate set - subzero/ice/urban/forest  
Custom knife (Kiko) *2  
Uina SAS Blackjack *2  
SA Blackjack ammo - 6 magazines, 21 rounds each, Lightside-extract  
SA Blackjack ammo - 2 magazines, 21 rounds each, explosive-tipped  
Uina LR Barrett  
LR Barrett ammo - 4 magazines, 10 rounds each, Lightside-extract

Additional ammo and supplies will be loaded on the Supply-Bot and available at your deployment. If you have any corrections, please contact your commanding officer. Your new PDA will contain the waypoints for your equipment retrieval and dropship dock. Estimated time until departure: 87 minutes. Thank you and have a nice day.

With that, the vending machine rattles and pops out a tablet computer. Well, that's certainly quite efficient of them. Only took a little over ten minutes. Of course, the big question now: how to spend those 87 minutes.

With plenty of time to waste, Kiko glances over the PDA. Starting screen has some checklist of objectives, with only 'obtain equipment' and 'board dropship' listed. A little poking around reveals a detailed map, a guidance system, and a whole directory of registered soldiers... wait, that's it. Search for Sora and voila... he's on the other side of the ship, but these things apparently double as phones. Time to call him up.

"We're sorry," chimes a pre-recorded female voice, "Your party is currently on the line with another caller. You may leave a message after the tone."

Voice mail. Lovely. Kiko disconnects, deciding to try again in a minute. In the meantime, she may as well go gear up. Kiko walks out of the validation room and into the grand hallway, keying up that first objective on the top screen. Conveniently enough, up pops a map with a guidance arrow and step-by-step directions. A bit unlucky for her, the equipment seems to be a good half-kilometer away. Her path straight for most of the way, Kiko brings Sora back up on her directory and makes another call.

"We're sorry," chimes that pre-recorded female voice again, "Your party is currently on the line with another caller. You may leave a message after the tone."

"Hey, um..." Kiko opens, stalling as she thinks of how to phrase her message, "This is Kiko. I have something _really_ important to talk about. Call me. Bye."

Well, it was pretty silly to expect him to be off the phone so quickly. Still plenty of time to get that warning through. Some more walking brings her to a large door with a neon orange outline. Kind of a pain, but then again, it seems they shipped her very own knives. Probably not a whole lot of control over where they end up. Kiko walks through the automated door to find a huge circular room with numbered dressing room doors all around. In the center is some type of display board with a long list of names and room numbers, displaying Kiko in room 37. Simple enough. Kiko decides to try Sora again.

"We're sorry," chimes that pre-recorded female voice yet again, "Your party is curren-"

Kiko hangs up with a sigh. What could be so damn important... well, he is the savior of the universe. If just anybody has his phone number, he's probably getting asked for a lot of inspirational speeches and autographs. Whatever. Well, time to get changed.

**--**

Kiko emerges from the changing room, twice as heavy and almost unrecognizable. Thick coats made of some type of wool mesh puff her figure out a good thirty centimeters and yet, the extensive climate control system maintains a calm 68 degrees. Underneath the white and grey patched exterior are dozens of zippered pouches, all filled with extensive survival equipment. First aid, multi-tool, climbing gear... although the retractable claws and boot spikes seem to serve the same purpose. Well, never too prepared. The large dangling mittens feel just a little silly and redundant given her fingerless gloves, but where else can the climbing claws come from? Even with her pouches, she's still burdened by the knives, handguns, and ammo on her waist and a rifle slung on her back. Never enough, it seems.

Completing her gear is a helmet and face-concealing scarf, full-vision goggles over her eyes with a built-in HUD and communication system. It's pretty clever engineering on their part to allow these PDAs to run through them; full access to all that information with an easy backup in the actual tablet computer itself. Fully outfitted and ready for action, she fumbles with the new PDA setup for a little until she gets another phone call through.

"We're sor-" chimes that pre-recorded female. Kiko doesn't bother listening further; she left her message already. With a bit more fumbling, Kiko brings up the second objective. Even less lucky for her, the docking bay is a full three kilometers away. How very efficient of them. Still a good 61 minutes until departure, so this shouldn't be too bad.

Kiko starts her slowed trek, thinking about other options to get this message through. Uina isn't listed for some reason, so he's out. Ironically, he'd probably be the one to really believe her, but with his recent mistakes and UCoP's mutually dim view, he's probably not in any sort of standing to do anything. Her other teachers aren't really very happy with her and probably didn't bother to remember her precognition. That leaves Riku... may as well.

"We're sorry," chimes that voice once again, "Your party is currently on the line with another caller. You may leave a message after the tone."

"Hey, um..." Kiko starts, "This is Kiko. I have something _really_ important to talk about. It can't wait. Please call me. Bye."

Halfway to the docking bay and Kiko figures out one of the disadvantages of this suit: she needs to go to the bathroom. How inconvenient. Well, still a good 50 minutes until show time. Lucky there's a bathroom nearby... unisex, unfortunately. Well, it's probably a lot easier on the engineers considering that the military is largely male-dominated to begin with. Kiko can't help but chuckle to herself as she walks in to find even the facilities are spacious and extensive, with every sink, shower, toilet, tile, and stall divider in the place sparkly clean. Nice to see money well spent. After a surprisingly easy session, Kiko calls up Sora once again.

"We're sorr-"

Still? May as well give Riku another shot.

"We're s-"

Well, isn't this crappy? Kiko really hopes they're being briefed for some really vital mission... that she knows is doomed to failure. She finds it so very infuriating to hold this knowledge and be unable to do anything with it. Three quarters of the way there and 35 minutes... as good a time as any to try again.

"We're-"

Still... dock in sight and 27 minutes to go. She can already tell she's in the right place with all the Yeo wandering around, similar in appearance but differentiated by gear. Some have rifles, some have half a dozen handguns, others have grenade launchers. Well-equipped all around. Oddly enough, rather than bundling up in layers, they're all smearing white and grey gels on their exposed skin in camouflage patterns. Must be some kind of thermal paste. After a good minute of glancing around, she finally manages to pick out Colonel Pahr in the center of this large crowd. May as well attempt to get Sora on the line again.

"We'r-"

Kiko clenches a fist for a second as the frustration starts to sink in. Here she is, privy to the knowledge that practically everybody she sees is going to be dead in a matter of hours and Sora can't answer his damn phone. She starts to entertain the thought that maybe she should get out while she still can, but no; she can't entertain thoughts of cowardice. She must be strong. She needs to keep in mind that simply knowing the future has allowed her to change it each time... although if that girl in black really does have the power of prophecy, Kiko is quite safe from danger... she finds it funny that there's a silver lining even in this dire situation...

Kiko finds herself distracted as a rhythmic series of double beeps start chiming in her headset. Not long after, Sora's name and picture pop up in the upper right corner of the HUD. Kiko breathes a sigh of relief as she answers the call.

"Hello," Kiko says, thinking frantically how to get the most out of this call.

"Hi, Kiko," Sora starts in a surprisingly optimistic tone, "I'm really kind of busy at the moment... have to save the world, you know... but I saw you called a couple times and I have a minute to talk. What's up?"

"I had a dream," Kiko starts, deciding she needs to keep from revealing her source lest she ruin her image, "In it, we were fighting on the planet when Darkside appeared. He... it destroyed everything, killed almost everyone, and flung you and some other people to the far edges of the universe... only Riku and I got out before the world ended."

"Kiko," Sora says, his voice dead serious.

"Yes?" Kiko answers, realizing she probably screwed this up pretty bad.

"Are you holding something back?" Sora asks.

"No," Kiko lies. She can't tell anyone her source. If they found out she's getting visions from the very same ancient destroyer they're trying to stop from awakening, not only will they lock her away and inject her with that awful stuff, they probably won't even pay any mind to her vision. No, she needs to get this message through without any source attached.

"I'm not an expert on seers or anything," Sora starts, "But I do know enough to know it doesn't make sense. You're telling me that with your one perspective, you somehow saw Darkside destroy the planet, me getting thrown through the Corridors of Darkness, _and_ Riku and you getting out safely? What ship did you two take?"

"Um..." Kiko stalls, "..I don't remember... it's kind of fuzzy..."

"Kiko," Sora starts, his tone dire, "Did a spirit talk to you?"

"...huh?" Kiko fakes, unsure of how Sora could possibly figure this out.

"You sound so sure of the details, but can't tell me what you saw..." Sora explains, "I don't mind if you lied to me just now, but you _need_ to tell me: did a _spirit_ talk to you?"

"...no," Kiko lies.

"...okay," Sora sighs, "This sounds like a normal bad dream. Drink some water, take a catnap, and you'll be fine."

"...that's it?" Kiko asks. How can he take it so lightly?

"Pretty much, yeah," Sora responds, "You didn't give us anything we can really use."

"We could just leave," Kiko offers, suddenly ashamed of herself for saying it like that.

"Kiko, _no_," Sora states in a firm tone, "A bad dream is not a good enough reason to abandon _fifteen thousand people_ to their deaths. Not only that, I don't have to be a politician to tell you the Daeh Yeo Mar Empire would be _pissed_ for _very good reasons_. No, we _have_ to go in."

"But what if my vision comes true?" Kiko asks out of obligation despite knowing it won't go anywhere.

"If I understand your description, it was just a dream," Sora states, calming down a little, "I'm sorry I got mad. It's just that... even if we're doomed, do we really _want_ to live knowing we let 15,000 people die?"

"...not really," Kiko admits.

"Besides," Sora continues, "Darkside can't just poof into existence. It needs the world to be completely covered with Heartless and tainted to the core. They're only on one of the eight continents and are just holding position without even gathering hearts. They'd have to kill every last one of us before they'd get the time to destroy the world."

"I don't know..." Kiko sighs, "I'm just worried. Aren't we really outmatched? King Mickey had to get all of us out here..."

"I have faith in our leaders," Sora states, "Tell you what: when all this is over, I'll treat you to some sea salt ice cream. Does that sound good?"

"Yeah," Kiko affirms. She's still not a big fan of the flavor, but it does seem to hold some special significance, after all.

"Okay," Sora says, "I'll see you later tonight."

"Bye," Kiko says, the call disconnecting. She punches into her palm in frustration, feelings of uselessness starting to overwhelm her. What's even the point of having such knowledge of the future if all she can do is get told off about it? Instead, she's forced to just act like she never had the vision... although now that she thinks about it, why is she placing so much stock in that dream, anyway? She has no proof that the girl in black is any kind of seer and given her status as the ancient destroyer, she might just be doing this to break her will. No, she needs to prove that her will is indomitable. Bucking up and wiping the mist from her eyes, she walks up to Colonel Pahr with determination in her pose.

"Oh, there you are," Pahr says, turning away from the gathered Yeo, "I was starting to worry you weren't going to make it."

"Sorry," Kiko responds. After a confused look from the Yeon, he makes some flicking motion in front of his mouth. Takes a second for Kiko to process this and respond by pulling her scarf down.

"We're loading in nine minutes," Pahr continues, "Have any questions?"

"Why the Etoquin team?" Kiko asks, "Isn't that the highest honor you guys have?"

"Piloting it is," Pahr corrects, "That takes decades, though. I just have you as an extra spotter because it seems like the kind of skill you have. You just have to follow Corporal Laefi and answer any questions about the Heartless. I can figure something else out for you if you want, though."

"I'm okay," Kiko states.

"You're sure?" Pahr asks.

"Positive," Kiko affirms.

"Okay, then," Pahr starts, leading Kiko towards this group of Yeo, "I'd like to introduce you to Corporal Mieimo Laefi. Corporal Laefi, Brevet-Specialist Kiko."

"Pleasure to meet you," Laefi says with a hard but warm smile, extending his arm. Kiko matches his movement, not getting a chance to pop off her mitten. This one seems to like his SMGs. He has four in the mold of the MP5 strapped around his torso and a pair reminiscent of the Uzi holstered on either side of his hips. Beyond this eclectic, excessive choice of weaponry, Kiko can't really tell him apart from the others. No matter.

"Sergeant Mai Piem," Pahr introduces, motioning to a Yeon on the receiving end of a skin paint treatment. His weapon is some absolutely gigantic, streamlined, advanced-looking rifle of some kind. An unnatural blue glow emanates from a tube in the center, short arcs of electricity pulsing within. There's no way he built this on his own; it looks way too clean and processed.

"Pleased to meet you," Piem states, holding his arms up, "I'd shake, but as you can see, the paste is still wet."

"That's okay," Kiko says.

"And, last but not least, Sergeant Umi June," Pahr states, motioning to a Yeon holding up a thick laptop in a metal briefcase. This one seems kind of weird. Compared to the others, he has small stature, extensive clothing, and only a small handgun for a weapon. He even has about the last thing Kiko could ever imagine on anybody in the proud Yeo military: a pair of glasses.

"Pleased to meet you," June states, not looking up from his machine as he clumsily shakes arms.

"Well, then," Pahr says with a clap of his hands, "I'll let you discuss your tactics. Loading in four minutes. Dismissed."

"May I speak with you a second, Kiko?" Laefi asks as Pahr walks towards the docking bay.

"Sure," Kiko says, unsure if she likes the tone. Laefi gently tugs Kiko by her arm a good distance away from not only the group, but from the general hearing range of the other Yeo present. After a couple glances around, Laefi turns to face Kiko with an apprehensive expression on his face.

"Okay," Laefi opens in a soft voice, "We both know my species idolizes humans like you. I don't know how it started and I don't think anybody else does, either. As far as we're concerned, humans have always been special. That's why our commander is so eager to impress and assigned you as a fifth wheel to my team. Follow?"

"Yes," Kiko responds.

"I'm not like them," Laefi continues, "I recognize that humans are just people, too; not the demigods my species believe. Just like us Yeo, only the rarest human is truly exceptional and praiseworthy. Until you prove your worth, I will only afford you the same respect I'd give to a completely unknown, informally trained Yeon randomly assigned to my unit out of favoritism... that is, very little. I will have to assume you don't know what you're doing and I will not go easy on you just because of your species. Understand?"

"Yes," Kiko responds, "I think you're right to doubt me. I told Colonel Pahr I was kind of worried to be in such an important group, but he said it would be fine."

"I'm glad we've come to this understanding," Laefi states, his voice lightening up as he does a friendly shoulder pat, "You seem like an alright gal. Just stay with the group, follow my orders, don't try to be a hero, and you should be fine. Shall we?"

"Yeah," Kiko responds, following Laefi's lead towards the docking bay. Well, nowhere to go but forward. Time to see just how accurate the prediction of that ancient destroyer really is.


	65. Burn the Witch

There's a certain, undeniable majesty to the standard issue Security Council tablet computer. Through this five centimeter thick piece of plastic and metal, one is given a plethora of features that seem like they'd almost be too much given its specs. Weighing in with a 5 gigahertz processor and 12 gigabytes of RAM, it seems downright quaint amongst the other space age technologies all around. Still, given it can handle incredibly detailed tactical maps, extensive files on everything imaginable, and live, high definition video feeds from all sorts of aerial cameras, does it really need much more than that?

It's a shame that even a full hour after boarding, the cameras have remained fixed on boring landscapes of the carrier. Provided all the hundreds of choices are cameras attached to the various dropships, it means that not a single one has launched. For being such a dire hostage situation, it seems everything is going at an oddly relaxed pace... perhaps it's a sign of weakness? Perhaps the Security Council, so thoroughly beaten and bruised, is not willing to take any chances? Of course, Kiko has no real evidence that this isn't just their pace for everything, so she should reserve her judgment until later.

She can at least take comfort in knowing she isn't alone in her restlessness. Many of the myriad Yeo soldiers seem positively irritated, talking in derisive tones about the perceived lack of action on the part of the commanders. Much of it can probably be chalked up to inexperience; after all, they're still very fresh inductees that have never staged a planetary assault before. Probably shows the refinement of Kiko's team that they aren't so impatient; in fact, they're talking about everything but the actual mission itself. Topics ranging across the spectrum from politics to philosophy to one a bit too close to home: romance.

"...are you still with that merchant marine gal?" Laefi casually asks of Piem.

"You mean Yui?" Piem responds.

"Yes," Laefi starts, a little apologetic, "Sorry I forgot her name; you never talk about her."

"Oh, that's fine," Piem says in a friendly tone, "We broke up."

"...again?" Laefi asks, incredulous and yet unsurprised.

"What can I say?" Piem continues, "It just wasn't working out between us."

"But she seemed so great..." Laefi sighs, "Faithful, sturdy, attractive... what was wrong with her? This must be the tenth gal you've turned down and they've all been just as great."

"That's just it," Piem counters, "She's _just_ like all the others. She works hard, trains hard, devotes herself to the empire, believes the propaganda, and just wants to settle down, have kids, grow old, and die. They're _all_ just so... _spineless_. I can't spend my life with someone that won't ever let me know how she really feels. I don't want to feel like I'm just some easily replaced tool. I don't want to wake up one morning and realize my life would be no different if I married some other gal. No, I want someone that can be my equal, my confidant, my other half, and I know just who that is."

"You're not talking about that poet, are you?" Laefi asks.

"Who else but my darling Laraien could ever be my equal?" Piem posits, "Oh, how her words speak to my very soul. It's like she knows me better than I do. Oh, such a gentle voice, its every syllable calling out to me..."

Kiko starts to drift off as she thinks on this Yeon's words. Oh, to be so madly in love, so vocal and proud to the whole world. It sounds like he's expected to marry within his caste and yet, he throws caution to the wind for someone who may not even know him. Such pure devotion; a love with no bound, timeless, incorruptible. Oh, what she would give for Riku to know such faith. Imagine how the world could be so very fine, so happy together...

**PAY ATTENTION**

Kiko jolts out of her daydream with a blink, a minor wave of disorientation washing over her. Kind of that same feeling when she slips in a dream, waking up with her senses still falling down. It doesn't take long for her to realize this is just how dull this waiting game is... and much too long for her to think about the meaning of this interlude. It rather disturbs her that for as brief and sudden an intrusion those two words brought, she seems to know exactly the source. To think the girl in black is able to even pry into her daydreams... then again, maybe it's just her brain drawing upon her day's preoccupied thoughts?

"...I just don't get you," Laefi drones, "You've been living with her for how many years?"

"Six," June says flatly, the tapping noise not even slowing down as he speaks. Kiko doesn't even need to look to know he's just typing away at his computer; what it could possibly be doing, she has no clue.

"Admit it," Laefi prods, "You must feel _something_ for her."

"Nothing," June states, "Just an understanding."

"Feh," Laefi says, "Sounds like romance to me. I don't think you're as blind to love as you claim..."

Kiko stumbles upon an idea: why not look up Darkside in the bestiary? Couldn't hurt. A little browsing brings up the file, with a profile picture too blurry, shaky, and poorly framed to be of any use. She can't even tell if it lines up to the game series at all.

**Darkside  
Purebred Heartless - Land - Type XIV (see notes) - Special (see notes)  
Known traits and abilities:** regeneration, energy absorption, gravity manipulation, null emotion field, solar fusion generation and projection, rapid summoning of Shadows and Neo-Shadows, _The Void_ (see notes).  
**Known behavioral tendencies:** stoic demeanor, disregard for self-preservation, impossible to distract, completely implacable in its drive for planetary destruction.

**Notes:**

Darkside is the single most powerful Heartless ever encountered in recorded history and, as a result, also the most contentious. Due to its supremely destructive nature, the electronic disabling properties of both its abilities and the Corridors of Darkness, and the mental turmoil it afflicts on its witnesses, there is little scientifically sound information. Safe and ethical testing of Darkside is considered impossible and even Xehanort, famed for his obsession and willingness to sacrifice people by the billions for his experiments, eventually wrote it off as "unknowable by mere mortals; the only way to understand it is to become it".

As a result, the exact nature of Darkside is unknown. It does not have the signatures of a leader and yet, it contains far too much power to be an underling. In fact, it may not even be a Heartless as currently defined due to its violation of the Heartless power hierarchy (hence its listing one number above the currently defined maximum). Unlike other Heartless, it cannot be summoned or controlled regardless of willpower or force of personality.

Sora is the only known person to survive a first-hand encounter with Darkside (let alone twice). The profile picture is the only surviving fragment of the video footage he took.

_**The Void:**_

Darkside follows a set pattern of behaviors that all contribute to its ultimate aim: the destruction of the host planet. Before it will appear, it requires the world to be saturated to a minimum recorded 4.7 billion Shadow-Equivalent spread over a minimum recorded 78.9% of dry land (both numbers fluctuate much higher; 20 billion and 99.4% are the accepted averages). The actual timing and additional factors leading up to its appearance remain unknown.

Once the world reaches that point, the Heartless will start gathering together in an approximately one kilometer area and dissolve into a pool of Heartless ichor. Once said pool reaches a span of a couple kilometers, Darkside will emerge as a gradually shaping blob over several minutes. When finished assuming its natural form, it will summon forth a dark cloud into the stratosphere that will envelop the world and blot out the sky over a 10-15 minute period. This same cloud disables electronics (hardened or not) and blocks out the sun; no ships can safely enter or exit the world at this stage.

Starting around the midway point of the cloud's envelopment, Darkside will start generating and projecting concentrated solar bursts into the air. Said bursts will travel around the world, arc back into the ground, and burrow to the planet's core. After it releases its bursts of energy, it will start summoning Shadows and Neo-Shadows by the thousand as it starts gradually increasing the world's gravity and sending all the Heartless into the core.

Once the event horizon is reached, the world and everything on it will collapse into a black hole and shift into the Corridors of Darkness. Some objects will reemerge into the material plane; most will fall into the Realm of Darkness to be consumed by its inhabitants. Once this happens, Darkside will go into remission until the next time a world is primed and ready for destruction.

**Suggested tactics:**

Escape. Do not delay, do not attempt to capture it on video, and most definitely do _not_ engage. Your only window of escape is the 10-15 minute period before the sky is blotted out by the cloud. After that, the only hope for survival is the unlikely chance of being thrown across the Corridors of Darkness to a habitable, developed world.

**Quotes:**

"Amongst a species born of ill desire and unrelenting chaos, Darkside is king." -- Ansem

"If one were to combine all my time fighting the Heartless and those who would use them, all my journeys to the darkest corners of the universe, and all the evil I've witnessed, it would not even be a fraction to the despair I've felt either time I fought Darkside." -- Sora

"During my time as Maleficent's apprentice, the worst thing she ever did to me was show me Darkside's face." -- Riku

**Known Encoun-**

"How about you, Kiko?" Piem interjects.

"...huh?" Kiko says, dismissing the file on Darkside and turning to face her teammates. She really does not need to know more about just how totally screwed everyone is should Darkside appear.

"Do you have a gal waiting for you back home?" Piem asks.

"Er..." Kiko stalls, the question making her feel uncomfortable.

"Kiko _is_ a gal," Laefi whispers, just barely audible to Kiko. Piem does a quick take before a look of embarrassment settles on his face.

"I'm sorry," Piem quickly apologizes, "I mean... I heard rumors about women in the human army, but I didn't think they were _true_..."

"Alright, everyone," Pahr mercifully interrupts as he walks in, everybody springing to attention, "High command just finalized the strategy. Looks like outside of a few specialists, they're giving the empire total reign for the ground battle. Think we can handle it?!"

"_Rah!_" shout all the Yeo in unison, pounding down into their palms. Kiko doesn't even find it surprising at this point; repeated chants are the most powerful loyalty tool out there.

"Well, then," Pahr continues, walking down the rows, "We're doing a standard bomb, stomp, drop, and plow; just like old times. I think we all remember how to do that, don't we?"

"_Rah!_" all the Yeo shout.

"Of _course_ we do," Pahr states, "We're landing on the south shore and pushing northwest. Remember: liberating the hostages is our _top priority_. I think everything else is self-explanatory. With that out of the way: who are we?!"

"_The Daeh Yeo Mar Army!_" chant the assembled Yeo.

"What are we?!" Pahr shouts.

"_The greatest fighting force in the universe!_" chant the Yeo.

"Who is our enemy?!" Pahr shouts.

"_The Heartless Forces of the Unknown Faction!_" chant the Yeo.

"What is our goal?!" Pahr shouts.

"_The total annihilation of all who stand against us!_" the Yeo chant, more forceful than the last.

"Will we back down?!" Pahr shouts.

"_NO!_" reverberate the Yeo.

"Will we compromise?!" Pahr shouts.

"_NO!_" Kiko shouts along, garnering a few awkward glances. Well, it was worth a shot.

"Will we settle for less than _total __**domination?!**_" Pahr shouts, his fist raised in the air.

"_**NOOOOO!**_" shouts everyone minus Kiko, pumping fists and weapons over their heads in defiance.

"All together now!" Pahr shouts.

"_Solidarity through individuality_," chant the Yeo, "_To each, an army in their own right._"

"Strap yourselves in, boys," Pahr announces, "We're going in!"

"Why does he have a group chant about individuality?" Kiko asks, fastening her seatbelt.

"Propaganda, dear gal," Laefi sighs, pulling out his tablet computer, "Doesn't have to make sense so long as it gets people going. Any questions about the mission?"

"No," Kiko states.

"Right, then," Laefi comments, staring into his tablet computer. Kiko goes back to her cycle through the myriad cameras, discovering most of the ships are now free from their docks and gathering in formations.

Thus begins the great invasion.

It doesn't take long before those same mechanical jolts and whines echo through the ship, a quick sinking feeling washing over for a split second. Kiko switches over to the rear camera of 'DYM-S01' to find the ship just starting its flight, speed gradually increasing as the carrier very slowly vanishes into the distance. While she certainly appreciates the absolutely massive scale of the ship, it eventually leads to the crushing realization: there's no turning back.

A switch to the front camera finds the ship assuming its place in the formation amidst the hundreds of transports. Kiko isn't quite sure why she didn't think about it before, but she now can't help wondering why the Daeh Yeo Mar Empire doesn't appear to have its own ships. Sure, they might have that talon grasping javelins insignia and their name emblazoned all over, but they just appear to be repainted versions of the standard fleet. Maybe it's a bit silly of her to expect the same patchy, non-uniform appearance of something as intricate as a space ship, but these are literally the same vessels. Perhaps they traded technology some time in the past?

Before Kiko gets too much opportunity to think about interstellar technology trade, a relatively tiny ship zips in from behind. Even with barely any time to register its sleek, blue and white form, she recognizes it as none other than Sora's. Seems only fitting; who else but the hero of the universe should lead the glorious charge? A couple seconds of nothing follow before a steady stream of bright orange explosions start flashing just over the planet. Can almost be seen as the welcoming fireworks show.

Several minutes of this go by without much of anything else happening. None of the other ships moving, no updates on the surprisingly sparse forum, nothing. Kiko starts to wonder just how the Heartless are able to pose much of a threat in space. The games showed them piloting space ships, but that seems way too complex for such a mindless species. It's a good thing the answers are all on this tablet computer should she know how to find them. Recalling something named 'Dominator', Kiko pulls up the file.

**Dominator  
Emblem Heartless (Unknown Faction) - Space - Type VII - Horizontal Conduit (second tier)  
Known traits and abilities:** dark energy charge, assimilation.  
**Known behavioral tendencies:** delayed target acquisition, inability to comprehend targets under 40 meters long, highly skilled in target leading and path prediction.

**Notes:**

The Dominator operates by attaching itself onto nearby space vehicles, infecting it with darkness and consuming the hearts of all within. Once it has completely corrupted the ship and extinguished all life within, it starts piloting it and attacking non-Heartless ships in the area. Given the lack of standard plasma energy signatures and the months many Dominators have fielded the same ships without access to compatible fuel or ammunition, they appear to convert all energy sources to draw from darkness. Otherwise, they only carry the same weapons as the ship itself.

Unattached Dominators appear as clouds of inky darkness; infected ships emanate that same cloudy substance all over their hulls along with black light from its engines and laser cannons. See attached pictures for examples.

**Suggested tactics:**

Like most Heartless, Dominators are weak to fire and as such, the best weapons are incendiary missiles and slow-burn plasma cannons; laser and projectile weapons appear to be largely ineffective. Unattached Dominators should go down with one standard explosive missile in its core; attached Dominators are much more resilient and generally require the total destruction of the host craft. They are known to abandon ship when all its weapons are disabled; aim for them, wait for the Dominator to unlatch itself, and fire a missile.

Unfortunately, should a Dominator attach itself to a ship, the only hope for survival is to escape before the darkness consumes the hull. Research into resistance and counter-measures is ongoing.

Well, as illuminating as that proves, it still doesn't answer Kiko's questions about the rest of the Heartless 'fleet'. A quick browse through the cameras cuts off that train of thought as they reveal hundreds of ships flying towards explosion central. Must be the combat fleet, with huge guns and banks of missiles taking up most of their engineering real estate. They slowly fly into the fray as well, vanishing into the distance for a few minutes before that steady stream of explosions turns into veritable maelstrom. Doesn't take very long for something new to happen.

"This is your pilot speaking," says a Yeon over the P.A., "We have just been cleared to go planet-side. Estimated time to deployment is now seventeen minutes and counting."

With that, the rest of the gathered fleet starts gradually breaking off and flying towards the planet. The remaining combat ships, much smaller and more aerodynamic, lead the pack as transports start following behind. It takes about a hundred ships before Kiko's starts its path. She starts to worry as the convoy heads straight for the explosions, but closer examination reveals the fleet maintaining a circle of empty space as it fights off these utterly bizarre creatures. While the Dominators are present, they are a vast minority amongst the almost-aquatic looking things surrounding them. Reminiscent of starfish and squids, they attack with barbs and tentacles made of inky darkness. Yet, for as dissimilar from their brethren as they are, they still display those same mindless, brutish tactics as any planet-bound Heartless out there.

Suddenly, one of the nearby battle-cruisers explodes with a powerful shockwave that pushes much of the convoy off-course. Before the gap in the line can be filled, a barrage of barbs tears through the middle of the convoy and wreaks havoc on many of the ships. Most end up disabled through destroyed engines and cockpits, but one particularly unlucky transport only one space ahead of Kiko's takes the combined might of a dozen barbs. It slows down for a second before it explodes with great flames tinted with inky blackness. Kiko's transport shakes violently as it flies through the fire, the lights dimming and camera turning to static. Could this be the end?

"This is your pilot speaking," the Yeon on the P.A. system drones, static washing over his voice, "Brace for reentry."

Almost immediately upon saying that, the ship starts shuddering and buckling under considerable stress. Something must have been damaged because reentry has never been this bad before. Everyone else seems to be concerned in their own ways, empty looks on their faces as they brace their seats. Deciding the camera is a lost cause, Kiko cycles through the channels of various combat vessels until she lucks out on one that just happens to be right behind her. Sure, it's hard to see through the reentry flames and clouds, but a quick glimpse is all she needs.

After an eternity of twenty seconds, the clouds let up to reveal a striking winter landscape. Frozen lakes and snow capped mountains stretch as far as the eye can see, everything drenched in white. A harsh blizzard batters the ship, clumps of snow smacking the camera and melting instantly. Amidst the blinding white is a massive group of black, the thousands of entities almost appearing as a quivering blob. Can be none other than a squadron of Heartless, ready and waiting for battle. Seems a bit small, but Kiko knows better than to doubt this enemy.

All at once, the gunships launch a hundred missiles towards the mass of inky darkness. Vapor trails streak through the sky, lines vanishing halfway to their target. An eerie stillness goes by for a few seconds before the Heartless squadron erupts into the most absolutely gigantic fireball Kiko has ever seen. Thousands of chain explosions belch out towers of flame, scorching the landscape and melting the frozen river. The occasional charred Heartless body comes flying out of the fury, dissolving into inky nothingness before it even finishes its arc. Nothing is getting out of that alive.

Kiko starts to worry as the ships continue their path straight into the inferno, but it lets up just in time to reveal... survivors. Lovely. Rather than firing off another wrath of god salvo into the remaining Heartless, the combat ships slow down to hover and start firing upon what little remains of the fliers. The transports all pass by, leveling out as they pound right on top of a whole lot of unlucky Shadows. Seems their 'standard tactic' is surprisingly literal.

Unfortunately, nothing but bad news comes as Kiko's chosen camera levels to reveal an army of Heartless that makes the first look like a mild gang of hooligans by comparison. Hundreds of thousands of these meter-long, swooping, bat-like creatures swarm the skies around these massive, fearsome, majestic black and gold birds. They let off these piercing shrieks that are audible even through the ship's hull; Kiko can only imagine how deafening it must be outside.

However, it's not so much the beasts of the air, the unfaltering line of Oni, or the millions of Shadows and Soldiers behind them as it is this curious new type leading the charge. Standing at roughly human height, shining blue and white armor with long, flowing capes adorn their bodies. They rush into the battle with pride and triumph, a sword in one hand and a flowing banner in the other. Kiko can only wonder where this design idea came from.

"This is your pilot speaking," drones the P.A. as Colonel Pahr takes a position midway through the cabin, "Touchdown in five."

"Alright, everyone, let's _move!_" Pahr declares with that undeniable fervor, drawing his bulky gun and crouching towards the ground. The harsh bounce as the ship slams into the ground doesn't even faze him, his talons dug into the steel grating. With a loud metallic snap as his starting gun, Pahr rushes towards the exit and leaps through the slim gap afforded by the rapidly opening bay door. A clamor of seatbelt snaps and talon clacks flood the cabin as Kiko turns to face her teammates.

"You ready, Kiko?" Laefi asks, his tone a dull condescension.

"Yes," Kiko confirms, doing her best to strum up some enthusiasm within. If she's going to leap straight into the middle of hell with the foreknowledge of everybody's doom, she needs to forget just that.

"Let's roll," Laefi commands, drawing his holster guns and starting a run to the fully-deployed ramp. Kiko follows closely behind Piem and June as the group leap out onto the battlefield. Her eyes are immediately drawn to the incoming Roc, the gigantic bird slamming into the transport with barely a second of clearance. She turns to witness the tangled beast rolling the ship, talons grappled as it furiously pecks and tears the ship apart. A volley of lasers from the nearby fighters blast it apart, the creature letting off a piercing shriek as it collapses into a puddle of inky blackness upon the ruined ship.

Thankful for her extraordinary luck, Kiko turns to face the nearing tide of Heartless. That blue armored creature, revealed as little more than a Neo-Shadow in fancy clothes, finds itself unceremoniously dispatched by dozens of bullets. The hundreds of Yeo run through the patches of flame and puddles of melted snow with nary a delay, firing wild volleys into the unyielding clubs of the Oni. Kiko can't quite tell if they realize these things deflect their firepower, but their zeal is still quite admirable, nonetheless.

That question becomes moot with a display of athleticism and sheer ballsiness that leaves even Kiko dumbstruck. These Yeo soldiers, presumably unenhanced by anything but their sheer dedication, all jump right into the swings of the Oni and leap off their clubs. Sure, a rare couple find themselves splattered, but hundreds of these completely natural, smaller-than-human beings arc through the air with a grace and aplomb to rival even the keyblade wielders. Swatting down the Interceptors without even slowing down, they blow apart the backs of the Oni and land with sweeps that launch a thousand Shadows into the air. Three seconds and the entire front line of this Heartless brigade has already buckled to a melee assault... maybe there's hope for victory after all?

Kiko breaks out of her trance, fully expecting her team to be a good distance away and irritated by her delay. Surprisingly, they're all just waiting nearby, watching the skies without so much as lifting their weapons. Seems rather odd compared to the gung-ho attitude of all the nearby soldiers.

"Shouldn't we be helping?" Kiko asks, a little confused by this lack of action.

"Etoquin hasn't been dropped yet," Laefi responds.

"Oh," Kiko concedes, still not sure why they can't help out in the meantime. She's not quite sure how she can help without risking friendly fire, but still... perhaps that's as good a reason as any?

Laefi starts leading the group in a slow walk towards the battle, Kiko caught unaware and lagging for a second. Still with no shots taken into the fray, the team maintains a deliberate pace mirroring that of the front line. As they pass the remains of that armored Neo-Shadow from before, Kiko picks up the banner and looks it over. The flag has a blue background, with a white sun pouring rays onto two recoiling black aliens of some kind. Kind of hard to tell with its abstract, blocky shapes. Dangling from just underneath is a computer disc, heavy protective case connected by a thin chain. Curious...

As Kiko continues to stare at the object, Laefi eventually looks back and swats it out of her hands. Well, no point arguing over that; he probably doesn't want to risk a trap, after all. The group eventually comes to a stop in a clearing, Laefi performing a survey spin before pulling out a communicator.

"This is Etoquin team zero-one," Laefi starts, pulling out one of his guns and firing a few darts into the ground, "Ready for drop."

"Affirmative," responds a quiet voice. Laefi holsters his equipment and pulls out a set of binoculars, scanning the battlefield. Not really anything of interest going on, anyway. Yeo effortlessly smashing the swarm, combat fliers shooting down Rocs, constant reinforcements of the Heartless failing to gain any ground; a one-sided battle all around. Given this clear domination on the part of the good guys, Kiko starts to doubt her vision; perhaps it was just meant to break her will, after all?

A couple minutes of nothing go by; may as well ask what's happening.

"What are we doi-" Kiko attempts, a gust of wind stealing her breath. Kind of a surprise that the blizzard wasn't so bad until just this second; maybe the wrath of god salvo chased it away for a few minutes?

"Etoquin should be here soon," Piem answers, turning away from the flurry batting his face. It doesn't take long for a ship to hover in from behind, its large frame blocking much of the cascading snow. It appears quite similar to the standard transports, but with its lower deck replaced with what appears to be a set of short cranes carrying a large steel box. The ship flies a good city block in front of the team, dropping the crate with a loud thud and continuing out of sight.

"Show time," Piem says enthusiastically, pumping his fist. A set of controlled bursts segment the crate and neatly collapse to reveal a vehicle five stories tall. Kiko had read about the Etoquin before, but standing in its presence is another experience altogether. It appears as a giant, spider-like robot, with six legs and four arms. Dozens of weapons line the arms in an asymmetrical fashion, pieces interweaving and interlocking on circular cogs. The whole thing has a surprisingly slapdash appearance compared to its prestige, with ammo feeds hanging like chains, a distinct lack of armor plating, and no paint whatsoever. Now this is a machine made for the business of kicking ass and nothing else.

"Umi June, engineer," June says into his headset, "Read?... confirmed. Diagnostics..."

The majestic machine takes what appears to be a bow as it bends forward into its front legs, its arms retracting all the weaponry towards its back. June types furiously into his laptop as schematic displays of the machine cycle through the screen. Too bad the text is unreadable to Kiko; she'd love to know what goes into a machine like this.

"Kiko," Laefi says, startling her just the tiniest bit.

"Yes?" Kiko asks, turning to face her leader.

"You know our objectives?" Laefi asks.

"Let me check..." Kiko says, fumbling with the tablet computer to bring up the top menu. Appears whoever wrote them only bothered to write 'Free civilians at Site 17' and 'Rendesvouz at South Canyon'. How helpful.

"We're going to rescue our people," Laefi starts anyway, "Orbital recon showed some of them tied to wooden poles with nearby Shadows carrying torches. Odds are... pretty good most of them aren't going to live, but we still have to try."

"Won't they just burn the people when they see us coming?" Kiko asks.

"Maybe," Laefi sighs, "We loaded our Etoquin up with dry chemical fire retardants, but there's no guarantee we can save everybody. They might set everybody on fire when they see us, but it's a risk we have to take. We ready, June?"

"Yes," June reports, the Etoquin's legs reconfiguring into a pair of tank treads.

"I'll explain on the way," Laefi states, a railed platform forming just below the massive vehicle's main body. Kiko follows the group as they board this outdoor deck, the machine zooming off.

**--**

"...but it turned out okay," Piem finishes.

"Good to hear," Laefi responds, his eyes closed as he stretches his arms. An hour on this uncomfortable steel platform will take the fight out of anybody. Kiko isn't quite sure what wears her more: the wind tunnel or the slush thrown up by the treads. Both are just as irritating even with all her layers, but perhaps it's just how little she has to do. Provided she ever gets another chance to go shopping, she's definitely buying a handheld console and some games no matter how unexciting they may seem.

"How much longer?" Kiko asks, her patience wearing thin. This is supposed to be an exciting battle for the fate of the world; not an uncomfortable road trip.

"Hmm..." Laefi lingers, whipping out his tablet computer, "...I think we're close enough. Umi?"

"Stop," June says into his headset. Sure enough, the Etoquin comes to a sudden stop that jolts Kiko onto her back. The Yeo all casually jump over the flimsy rail onto the ground, Kiko rolling off to save some time. From this vantage point, she can just barely see the city in the distance. High rise buildings covered in a thick layer of snow, vague outlines of Heartless all over.

"Forward fifty," June states, the vehicle lurching in response, "Drones."

The massive vehicle comes to a stop fifty meters ahead, bending forward and launching a dozen small orbs from a cannon on its back. Thin rotor blades pop out of the drones as they reach the apex of their arc, hovering off like miniature helicopters towards the snow-battered city. Another minute of silence goes by as everybody stands idle, June typing furiously into his computer. Laefi looks on over his shoulder, pointing out a few things on the rapidly developing map. With their plan settled, Laefi turns to Kiko.

"Right, then," Laefi starts, pulling out a headset and his tablet computer, "We're going silent. Everyone set frequency to 'G013p-921'."

With that, everybody else dons their headsets and covers their face with thick scarves. It takes Kiko a few seconds to figure out how to set her frequency, but with that out of the way, she puts the scarf back over her mouth.

"Testing," chimes Laefi's voice over the headphone, "Mai?"

"Present," chimes Piem's voice, crystal clear.

"Umi?" Laefi asks.

"Present," chimes June's voice.

"Kiko?" Laefi asks.

"Present," Kiko responds.

"Let's get this show on the road,." Laefi states, pointing towards the city.

"Engage," June says, the Etoquin somehow bouncing into the air and transforming its treads into two thick legs. The loud servos and slushy pounds of the machine certainly kill any idea of stealth, but that's all just part of the plan. Laefi leads the charge with characteristic zeal, the group following as best as it can. Kiko has to admire a person that can just run on snow and ice without even the slightest worry of slipping. It certainly takes all her effort to keep her balance on this terrain.

"Fire escape, residential southeast," Laefi announces, the buildings growing nearer with each stride. Standing around fourteen stories tall, these monolithic structures of steel and glass seem only half-finished. Some still have scaffolding while others don't even have any windows. Heartless formerly stationed on the balconies and rooftops leap onto the Etoquin with reckless abandon, their bodies flung aside like rag dolls as the massive machine continues its unhindered plow. It doesn't even have to fire any of its weapons to rack up an impressive kill count just by inadvertently stepping on several at a time. Certainly nothing subtle about this creation.

The fire escape now imminent, the team takes turns leaping up a story onto the dangling ladder. Perhaps most impressive is June's talon-only latch and bound without ever taking his hands off his computer. Not quite the athleticism one expects from a computer geek like him. Kiko follows as best she can, her hands almost slipping from the developing layer of ice. She looks up to find herself lagging behind, the Yeo three stories ups. Kiko runs up as fast as she can, constantly readjusting her balance along the way. Takes all her effort to get up to the top without slipping and falling, but she finally catches up to the stopping point just under the roof.

"Positions, Umi?" Laefi asks.

"Six Shadows, ten hostages," June responds, "North facing west."

"Let's get to it, Kiko," Laefi declares, leaping right off the platform and grabbing onto a ridge just below the roof. Kiko wants to protest such a risky maneuver, but what position does she really have? With her leader already shimmying along at a steady pace, Kiko performs a leap of her own and just barely grabs hold of the structure. Forcing her sight up lest she realize how stupid this is, she starts her own shimmy as she tries to catch up. Each hold brings with it that growing worry of a slip that would send her down to become a red crater, but she presses on. As her teachers always say, she's representing the school and needs to put forth her best effort.

Rounding the corner very carefully, she thanks her luck to find Laefi stopped halfway across. Another forty meters of worrisome shimmying brings her by his side.

"Is this your first time on the field?" Laefi asks, masking his irritation very well.

"...yes," Kiko half-lies for the sake of simplicity.

"We'll stick to the basics, then," Laefi starts, "Over the rail, take the left. Got it?"

"Yes," Kiko says, bending her legs inwards towards the wall.

"Go!" Laefi suddenly exclaims, kicking off the wall into a flip and drawing his guns as he arcs over the rail. Kiko sighs as she tries the same, only managing to get a straight hop onto the rail. She barely even gets a glimpse of Laefi casually capping the Heartless with guns akimbo before her footing slips, launching her into a face-first dive right into the rail. She knocks her heavily padded head on the structure, the total lack of shock disorienting her just the same. Her bounce sends her plummeting off the side, but through her fast thinking, she engages the claws and punctures the wall of glass. The most utterly irritating, shrieking noise rings out as the metal claws scrape through the shimmering surface. Just as her eardrums feel ready to explode, her climbing spikes latch onto some type of notch and nearly bounces her right off. If there is a Lady Luck, she certainly is watching her today.

Dangling a good ten stories above a snow-driven death, Kiko realizes a sobering truth: she's obsolete. Perhaps it's not quite the appropriate thought given the situation, but it's true. The Yeo all run faster, jump higher, maneuver better, and don't even seem to notice the ice. Maybe she once filled a niche for lithe scout/assassins, but now that there are so many specialists with standard training that puts her to shame, what is really left for her now? Probably just grunt work; not even worth being on the same planet as Riku... much less his girlfriend...

"Kiko?" Laefi chimes in.

"Yes?" Kiko responds, her voice wavering a little.

"We're here: where are you?" Laefi asks.

"Um..." Kiko stalls. She needs to think of a graceful way to explain her situation.

"Nevermind," Laefi says, once again masking irritation. Only takes a few seconds for a line of rope to drop down just beside her. Well, that works. Kiko very carefully reaches over and grabs on, hoisting herself up as quickly as she can. She finally emerges back on top to find Laefi and Piem supporting the rope, teeth gritted and muscles twitching. How much can she really weigh? Takes a second for her to notice all the stakes have been cut down; a glance around reveals all the hostages in excessive coats lying with arms crossed and eyes closed.

"What's with the hostages?" Kiko asks.

"They're dead," Laefi states, depressingly matter of fact, "These Heartless seem like they tried to keep them alive, but didn't do a very good job."

"Oh..." Kiko says, feeling pretty stupid to not figure that out.

"It's unfortunate," Laefi sighs, walking over to June, "Umi, show me those bonfires we saw earlier."

"Here," June says, holding up the computer. Kiko can barely make out what appears to be an image of a rooftop with a bonfire in the center. The hostages are all arranged in a middle circle while the Heartless maintain an outer circle. The inky black creatures, almost all Soldiers, have these torches on poles they rhythmically pound into the floor. They must know they're on camera or something.

"Alright," Laefi starts, walking to the side of the building, "Umi, have the Etoquin extinguish the roof in 30 seconds."

"Will do," June responds, walking alongside Piem as they regroup with their leader. Piem fastens his giant gun firmly across his back and takes the two Uzi imitations from Laefi's holsters.

"Let's goooooo!" Laefi exclaims, the three Yeo suddenly dashing to the side and vaulting off the building. Taken by surprise, Kiko runs as fast as possible to catch up. A leap over the rail surprises her with a two story drop, the landing staggering her into a set of painful somersaults on the frigid surface. Rolling back onto her feet, she thanks her luck to find the rest of the buildings on an even level. Kiko continues her rooftop hopping pursuit, the Yeo a good four buildings ahead and closing on their targets. Unfortunately, the Heartless are just as aware, rushing the hostages with torches at the ready.

But just as planned, a shell flies in from the distance and bursts in a shower of white foam. The flames all gone and the Heartless stunned, the Yeo leap with guns blazing. Before they even land, half the Soldiers are given nice round holes in their heads. Laefi and Piem don't waste any time as they start their dashes in opposite circles, bullets flying through the freshly dissolving masses of ink to the targets behind. It doesn't even take five seconds for them to finish their rounds, the roof clear before Kiko can even leap over. Nice to see she's so very useful.

"You there, Kiko?" Laefi asks, turning the corner to find her, "Nevermind. We're going ahead. Please cut down the hostages. Tell them to go to the relay station and await extraction."

"Okay," Kiko responds, unsure whether or not he's showing a lack of faith in her ability.

"Twelve seconds, Umi," Laefi states, the trio starting another dash. How very nice of them to leave Kiko behind to do the easy stuff. Well, if she can't keep up, why should she slow them down? Her duties set, Kiko draws a knife and walks up to the first stake to find a dead Yeon with her throat torn out. Lovely. It doesn't really surprise her given just how monstrous the so-called Unknown Faction has proven, but it still disturbs her to see just how little life means to these tyrants. Kiko walks a few corpses over to find a live one, his face glazed over with frost.

"Are you with the empire?" the Yeon asks, weak but surprisingly calm.

"Yes," Kiko confirms, only then remembering her scarf and pulling it down, "Yes."

"Kind of funny to see a human," the Yeon says, "Security Force?"

"Yes," Kiko states, cutting the Yeon's bonds and helping him down from his stake. He stumbles for a second, but steadies himself while lightly pushing Kiko back.

"Get back to your team," the Yeon states, a serious expression on his face, "I'll take care of everyone here."

"But-" Kiko attempts.

"They need you more than we do," the Yeon states, "I don't understand why they're wasting a perfectly good human on us."

"Um..." Kiko stammers, trying to think of something to say, "You gu-"

"Relay station," the Yeon states, "We know. Well, what are you waiting for?"

"Okay, then..." Kiko says weakly as she pulls her scarf back up, turning around and running towards the next building. In all the video games she has played, she has never run into a self-sufficient hostage before. They've all been rather sheepish and incapable of basic survival, but it's kind of silly to continue applying video game logic here. Kiko catches up with her teammates, Laefi and Piem still cutting down hostages.

"Kiko?" Laefi asks, turning to face Kiko, "You could not have possibly finished that fast."

"This guy told me he'd get everybody else," Kiko responds, "Even knew about the relay station."

"And you didn't stay to help?" Laefi retorts, barely masking his irritation.

"He insisted I get back to you," Kiko responds.

"Trouble," June chimes in, running over to one of the sides. Kiko doesn't need a prompt to follow, arriving to find an unsettling sight. Standing across from the Etoquin in this wide open park is a Heartless that utterly dwarfs it, just as tall but twice as wide and six times longer. It appears as some kind of cross between a wolf and a rhinoceros, several tons of taut muscle twitching with every move as their gigantic veins pulse a sickly purple fluid. Hanging over the torso and head is a massive collection of armor plates, a mosaic of blues, whites, and blacks duplicating the flag's logo. Completing this powerhorse of a Heartless is a misshapen horn protruding directly from its raised forehead, its wicked curves and ivory smooth surface swirling with dark purple energies. The creature lets out a loud roar that reverberates through the snow-soaked landscape, its accompanying stomps shaking the very foundation of the building.

"Where did _that_ come from?" Laefi asks, tilting his head as he stares down into the ensuing battle. The Etoquin fires a volley of plasma bolts and tracer bullets at the head, everything bursting apart on a flickering, dark purple energy dome just a dozen meters in front of the beast. Unfazed and enraged, the hulking creature charges with a constant swagger and methodical stomp. The Etoquin side flips over the stampede with a set of rocket flares, firing a volley into the monster's back that barely even chips the paint. The large machine doesn't even get a chance to follow up on its landing, the Heartless recklessly smashing around the corner into the grid of buildings.

"Kiko?" Laefi says, distracting her from watching the stationary machine as it reconfigures its weaponry.

"Yes?" Kiko responds.

"What is that?" Laefi asks.

"Um..." Kiko murmurs, thinking back on what she has heard before, "...I think that's a Heavy Behemoth."

"You 'think'?" Laefi prods, "How do you 'think' we can destroy it?"

"Aim for the horn," Kiko offers, the Heavy Behemoth striding back into view.

"...sure, why not?" Laefi concedes.

"Horn," June states flatly, typing some stuff into his computer. The Etoquin's arms go into another interlocking frenzy as the Heavy Behemoth approaches, settling on a pair of rotary slug throwers. As the Etoquin fires a pair of shots that futilely burst upon the energy shield, the Heartless starts gathering purple electricity through its body into the tip of its horn. The light, little as it may be in this blizzard, seems to darken and bend towards a singularity gathering within the sphere of energy. Even the very winds seem to give way to this increasing nothingness the monster is calling forth.

"Meteor..." Kiko murmurs, staring in morbid fascination as an unnatural trepidation washes over her. Almost as though the very life is being sucked out of her.

"Huh?" Laefi says, confused. As if to clarify Kiko's ponderance, the Heartless arches its back and throws its horn up in the air. The ball of energy, already twice the size of the Etoquin, gradually flies up in the air as thick bands of electricity link the singularity to its creator. With a sudden sonic boom that flexes the buildings and shakes the very ground, the sheer nothingness expands while space and time warp in ways beyond mortal comprehension. Could this be... Darkside?

But thankfully, Kiko's original assessment turns out true. Flaming wreckage of indeterminate material spew out at blinding speeds with little aim, their trails of extreme heat lingering as they cut through the buildings and landscape with no resistance at all. Giant clouds of dust kick up with each impact, the nearby snow melting in veritable torrents of water and dissipating into mist shortly after. Kiko thanks her luck that the creature has its back to the team; otherwise, they'd probably be screwed. The Etoquin, frantically dodging by sheer luck alone, fires volley after volley that only serve to illuminate the energy shield ever brighter.

"How do we stop it?!" shouts Laefi through growing static.

"I don't know!" Kiko shouts desperately, the static growing to eardrum shattering levels. She turns off the tablet computer and tears the scarf from her face; an action mirrored by her companions.

"Let me try!" Piem shouts, tossing the gigantic rifle into his arms and smacking a switch with his fist. The sleek machine gives a bright teal glow as the Yeon flips down the bipod, slamming the gun onto the half-wall and setting his aim upon the terrifying creature. With a sudden blast, a burst of teal energy fires out as the recoil nearly knocks Piem off his feet. The surge of energy, barely slow enough to follow with the naked eye, zooms with a vapor trail across the back and right at the horn of the creature... and misses by only a couple meters. What makes it odd, however, is the way the bolt arcs right past the shield and spirals in shorter circles up into the growing maelstrom of chaos. Weirder still is how the vapor trail doesn't go with it; it just sits in place and dissipates on its own with nary a budge.

"...I missed?" Piem says weakly, staring dumbstruck at the rampaging creature. The meteor shower grows with ever more intensity as the Etoquin abandons its assault, focusing exclusively on survival. One building finally finds itself too battered to stand, tumbling over in what almost seems like slow motion. Kiko manages to get a glimpse of a group of hostages on the roof, helpless and terrified as they get smashed into the side of the neighboring tower. Looks of sheer horror plant themselves on the faces of Kiko's companions, the sight of so many of their brethren dying so senselessly finally getting to them.

Enraged, Piem swings the gun back on the wall and aims with obsessive precision. This time, the bolt flies a few meters to the side, the gravity of the singularity arcing it right into the horn. The burst of energy explodes into a bright teal cloud of smoke and sparks, the Heartless recoiling as its electricity starts to fluctuate. Its control lost and meteors fading, the Heartless lets out a series of loud bellows as its flesh starts to char.

"Now," June commands, the Etoquin running back from the sidelines. With one arm firing while the other does its interlocking transformation, the big machine sends a wall of lead and plasma at the writhing creature. Not wasting even a nanosecond, the Etoquin raises the newly finished missile bank that was once an arm and fires several dozen small missiles that explode in a flurry of orange flashes and purple bolts. The horn, resilient to the very end, finally bursts into a million shards that drift apart and fade away. With the rest of the head little more than an oozing black paste mixed with molten metal, the Heartless bursts into a bright light and a fading, pinkish heart floats up.

...and yet, the singularity remains. Chaotic and unstable, the very reality surrounding it warps and bends as it starts to collapse in on itself. The light gradually returning to the surrounding landscape as the abnormality closes, it still manages to get one last hurrah before fading from existence. From within its depths, a massive blob of black ink shoots out towards the Etoquin. This alien substance, so completely beyond mortal rationalization, sinks into the machine as it spasms violently.

"What's the hell's going on?" Laefi asks in disbelief.

"...don't know," June responds, his fingers tapping the keyboard at light speed. Kiko watches on as the display flashes red boxes and a constant stream of text, the screen flickering as static starts to overwhelm. After half a minute of the Etoquin's violent convulsions and June's futile attempts at regaining control, the screen shuts off just as the vehicle falls to its hands... guns and knees. The machine, completely saturated in swirling darkness, grows a pair of glowing yellow eyes form where a head should be.

"Oh, crap..." Laefi murmurs, staring at the newly created Heartless with a sharp fear in his eyes. The creature gives a low gurgle as it stands up, black fluid still dripping off its frame. With no warning at all, it wildly flings its arm and fires a single, large rocket right at the team's building. All three Yeo start running in the opposite direction and yet, Kiko can't help but stand there. There's no way this is happening. Some type of external force has been protecting her all this time; why does it abandon her now? There's just no reason-

Kiko gets launched into the air as a gigantic explosion topples the building. The structure fragments as dark purple fire blasts through the fissures, engulfing the Yeo while narrowly missing Kiko. Her arc through the air finds her falling the full fifty meters towards the scorched ground. With debris in front and the victorious wail of the Heartless abomination in the air, Kiko starts to wonder where it all went wrong just before the final thud.


	66. Abominable

Out in the middle of nowhere in the great sea of nothing, there is a non-existent island. On the way to this empty land mass, one can see the blank dolphins and vacant seagulls hunting the aught waters for nix food. Should one make the journey without being raided by the Pirates of Nihility, the vacuous beach shall gladly accept their clear boat. Walking through the colorless, shapeless, odorless landscape, one can admire the stark flowers and lacking fountains on their way to the Temple That Can Not Be. After braving through the bare traps, one can find the Amulet of Null and get absolutely zilch for all their non-effort.

...or so one would expect upon defeat at the hands of the Heartless, but the reality seems quite different. Instead, while one does fall helplessly into darkness, there's actually quite a lot going on. Floating objects of all shapes and sizes litter the scenery as far as the eye can see, their forms giving off a light all their own. A thick wall of sound fills the space, predominantly composed of clock ticking and haunting piano over a gust of wind. The occasional burst of chatter calls out from the objects, too soft to travel and too brief to make out. The actual purpose of this realm is unknown; it just simply is.

Falling down at a glacial pace is a human, a girl... or the idea of one, anyway. Tall, thin, lanky, brown hair, hazel eyes, and not a single shred of clothing on her. Her face unprettied, her skin unenhanced, her hair untrimmed; a rough-hewn appearance, divorced from society's expectation. After all, when stuck in this netherworld, this limbo, what does it matter?

_Distressing..._

In one corner of this pocket universe, far from the girl, is a set of geometric shapes. Four-sided triangles, circles with angles, parallel lines that intersect. Amidst these objects is visible oxygen, invisible iron, and lead that floats in the air. Light stands still, gravity repels, and everything Newton, Einstein, and Hawking ever held sacred is wrong, wrong, WRONG.

_You did so well without my guiding hand... what went wrong?_

In another corner of this space is a circular mural, floating free with no depth or weight. On this flat, two-dimensional object is a painting of a battle between two figures, the scale epic and tragic. On one end is a young boy with spiky brown hair in a complex black and red outfit, loose fitting and oddly textured. Brought to his knees and recoiling in pain, he holds his shattering crystal sword in a desperate stance. Hovering overhead and cast in shadow is a feminine figure, a red crystal spear gracefully held against her back with one hand as waves of visual distortion ripple her extended other.

_Dying a faceless death is unbecoming of one such as you. You deserve so much more..._

The falling girl passes through a collection of statues, their marble and bronze polished to a flawless sheen. An angel holding a whip in one hand and a set of shackles in the other stands over a worshiping crowd, a condescending expression on its face. Above said angel is a pair of men in business suits holding puppet strings, laughing and jeering at the pious people. Piles of dollar bills fall out of their overflowing pockets, transforming into rain as it batters the masses below.

_No. I will not allow it. You have yet to play your part._

The spires of a cathedral passes by, its floors below vanishing into tendrils of light. An ovular stain glass window depicts a bulbous three leaf clover of simple shapes, thick lines, and a flat white and gold color scene. Two vines cross at diagonals from the upper corners to the lower center, three flowers budding on each one. A girl in a flowing black dress stands on the edge of a balcony, tilting forward on her feet and falling towards the descending naked figure with arms wide open. Tangible darkness swells behind her, forming into two wing-like appendages as her speed increases.

_I will not let you fall for so long as I live and breathe..._

The girl in black grabs the hand of the naked figure, a mixture of black and white mist envelop her as her figure fills out and her hair shifts to blue.

_...I shall be your Guardian Heartless Angel._

**--**

Emily wakes up with a groggy moan as a dull ache resonates through her body. Her eyes blurry and her face numb with cold, she raises her head out of the snow bank and glances around the landscape. She barely makes out the ruins of the various skyscrapers stretch as far as the eye can see, only a few small fires standing resolute in the blizzard. An ice slick has developed on practically every surface, glistening in the last rays of the barely visible setting sun. Painful on her subsiding dark vision even through the filter of her goggles.

But something unexpected rises into Emily's field of vision: a Lightside Heartless Ray. Its inquisitive eyes lock with Emily's in a deep gaze, its expressionless face somehow looking curious in spite of its lack of features. Where it comes from or why it cares about Emily is quite beyond her.

"What are _you_ looking at?" Emily says weakly, coughing as her breath rustles her dry throat. As if the words reveal a lack of anything interesting about her, the creature prances away from Emily towards the ruins. Her focusing eyes, just finally adjusting to her environment, reveal at least a hundred of these white creatures running through the wreckage. Their purpose unknown and perhaps unknowable, Emily simply thanks her luck that they apparently don't care about her. Who knows... maybe they can stop this planet's destruction?

Emily decides not to think too hard on her dream as she struggles to pick herself up from the snow and debris. She's here in the now on a potentially-doomed planet and she can't waste time analyzing the symbolism of this other realm. No, she needs to rejoin the army and help drive back the Heartless threat as best as she can. It's not like there's anything she can really use in that vision, anyway.

Finally managing to push her way out of the debris surrounding her, she reaches into her pocket and turns the tablet computer on to get a blast of static in her ears. Brain overwhelmed by the noise, her instincts guide her hands in tearing her headset right off, cables and all. Oops...

Nonplussed, Emily pulls out the tablet computer to find it on the fritz. The display, cracked and leaking a clear fluid, is barely legible under the growing static. Working as fast as she can, she barely manages to get a glimpse of Sora's position before the unit dies. Appears he's somewhere to the northeast... well, it's as good a lead as any. With no communication and no real idea where this 'South Canyon' lies, all she can do walk.

A quick glance back to the rest of the debris reveal her teammates, broken, burnt, and scattered. She'd almost be shocked by seeing her former companions this way, but she kind of figured they weren't going to make it. After all, she's apparently the only one with protagonist powers of surviving near-impossible situations. No point crying over it, after all.

Deciding to pool the remaining resources, she takes off her waist pack and ruffles through its contents. Broken flashlight, climbing hammer, pitons, compass, crushed amulet... wait, that can't be good. With the lapis lazuli shattered and the internal cogs spilling out, there's no way it can possibly still be functioning. If anything, given its power to seal the cores of the most powerful Heartless, it's probably not a good idea to keep it around when it could potentially malfunction. Who knows what will happen? Hoping that whatever vague threat Uina is guarding about won't come to pass, Emily tosses the clump of useless brass into the wreckage of the building.

With that out of the way, Emily checks Laefi's corpse for his tablet computer... it's not like he's using it, after all. Unfortunately, it doesn't want to respond. Figures. He doesn't really have anything else of use, so she moves on to June. Sadly, his tablet is also not responding and his large computer is impaled on a crossbeam... not like she can really use it with the language barrier, after all. Not wasting any time, Emily hops on top of the debris and starts looking around for Piem. She somehow knows his tablet won't be much better, but she still needs to try.

After a minute of fruitless search, Emily finally finds him amidst the piles of broken glass and twisted metal. His blackened skin and contorted spine don't give much hope for his possessions. Emily certainly isn't surprised to find his tablet just as burnt as his body, but a teal glow catches the corner of her eye. Underneath a pile of metal bars is Piem's plasma gun... or whatever it is. A weapon impressive enough to give pause to a rampaging Heavy Behemoth is definitely good enough for her.

"Sorry," Emily mutters as she fishes the weapon from the ruins. Probably a bit silly to apologize to a corpse for disrespecting his culture, but she needs all the help she can get if she's going to get through this alive. Slinging the large gun across her back and pulling out her compass, she finds her path seems to be the same as the swarm of Lightside Heartless. With a doubtful sigh, Emily starts running amongst these equally destructive counterparts as she rushes to reunite with Sora and hopefully save the day.

**--**

As Emily runs along with the Lightside Heartless, she finds herself wondering about their purpose and nature. They seem so determined about something to the point of completely ignoring her and yet, they also passed the wandering 'Darkside' squadron a kilometer back without a glance... she has no clue why they have to be confusingly named after their most powerful patrons, but whatever. There's some sense of security in them and should they turn on her, she's pretty sure she can outrun them. It's not like there aren't a hundred million other things on the planet that want her dead...

She is at least thankful at their bright nature. Given the blizzard and the setting sun, it should probably be pitch black at this time. Not like there's really any scenery to look at; just a whole lot of abandoned construction sites for what appear to be a line of domes. She still doesn't have any clue why they chose this ass-end of the planet to colonize, but maybe they have something to do with it?

The stream of Lightside eventually take a sharp turn into a nearby valley, completely ignoring the pitched battle only a kilometer away. As far as Emily can tell, a Heavy Behemoth is mopping up the last of the Yeo squadron as Sora tries so very hard to take it down. No meteors at the moment, but the torn landscape and distorted clouds suggest that it's just taking a breather at the moment. Something tells Emily that she'd be better off following the Lightside Heartless; she is supposed to be a scout, after all, and it's not like Sora doesn't have infinitely more capability than her, anyway.

Confident in her ability to rejoin Sora when the time comes, Emily diverges into the valley and follows the stream of Lightside as they surge around a bend. Must be pretty close to their target because the occasional red laser beam tears through the air. Emily already has an inkling of an idea what this can mean and while she'd normally be reluctant, an onslaught of Lightside taking point and a true marvel of a gun in her arms seem to guarantee her victory.

Turning the corner proves her suspicions correct. Emerging from a stone temple with a constant barrage of Lightside Heartless leaping at him is Cenari, his corrupted space suit searing white with heat and pouring out smoke by the ton. His red lasers constantly firing as reckless Heartless try to drag him down, what can only be described as a determined look graces his deformed face. Clutched close to his chest is a prism.

"Too late!" Cenari shouts as he shakes off the piling masses, "Warped and bewitched, wild and bereft shines from the dark. I already found what I was looking for and your hopes can only suffocate!"

Emily dives a nearby mound of snow as she realizes how bad it would be for Cenari to spot her. He might not appear to have any drones out at the moment, but if she's going to take him down, she needs that initiative. Still, the twisted astronaut seems distracted by something. Without slowing his struggle to break free from his attackers, he glances around the landscape as if to find something. He pauses for a few seconds as he seems to almost sniff the air, a veritable pileup of Lightside Heartless overwhelming him.

"She's here!" Cenari shouts as one effortless motion launches his oppressors in an outburst of white bodies, "I can sense that evil in her veins. Come out, empress of the darkest soul, and I shall consume your innocence!"

Emily shuffles that nonsense to the same mental pile as her dream as she shuffles her gun forward. She can see the frenzy developing in his eyes, his arm extended as he mutters something inaudible. She doubts he could be talking about her, but she certainly doesn't want to let him go on his rampage. He is far beyond caring about collateral damage and who knows what his twisted mind might target? She only hopes this gun doesn't have any safeguards to lock her out.

"Arise, my assassin!" Cenari commands as the air goes still, "Destroy the spineless! Crucify my enemies! Let not a single person feed the hex of that-"

Emily fires a plasma bolt right into the chest of the rambling abomination, the teal explosion short-circuiting his suit and launching him in a smoke heavy arc out of sight. No way he's walking away from that one. A set of bright flickers brings Emily's attention back to her goal: the prism. While it was far from her mind at the time of the shot, she isn't too surprised to see it survive such punishment. If the precursors can build an upright coffin that can deflect Cenari's laser, why shouldn't the prisms be just as well made? With him out of the way, she only needs to scoop it up now.

Unfortunately, it appears it won't be that easy. A massive blob of black ink starts to rise out of the ground, the prism bouncing off its slopes away from Emily. That overwrought bastard must have been summoning a Heartless and it certainly isn't failing to live up to his inflated sense of the dramatic. She's certainly not going to wait for it to take form, so she leaps out of the snow and starts running around towards the bouncing prism. She ignores the developing grey fur over saggy muscles as the artifact settles in the snow. Won't be hard to grab it and run before the monster even has eyes.

Of course, the Lightside Heartless aren't going to allow that, carelessly knocking Emily aside as they swarm towards the prism; should have seen that one coming. She finds just a little insult in this one that steps on her head and forces her face into the snow. The stampede finally past, Emily lifts herself up to find the creatures of light triumphantly pumping their claws in the air around one holding the prism.

"No," Emily mutters, raising her plasma gun and letting a bolt loose. The resulting explosion melts and tosses half the mob in all directions, the prism launched high up in the air. She can practically feel the combined animosity of the creatures focused on her as most of the survivors start their approach, a rare few following the artifact with heads cranked up. Well, so much for easy.

Emily knocks the safety back in place as she leaps to her feet, a pack of Rays rushing in to attack. An effortless two-handed swing knocks aside those in front as she dashes past the others, her eyes trained to the sky. She slings her gun onto her back and draws her knives; there may be no Lightside ahead, but she knows better than to leave herself open. After all, with the giant dark-aligned monstrosity starting to arch its back as torrents of dripping fluid form into thick arms, it's not worth using her best weapon as a club.

Of course, her worries prove justified as more Rays form from steaming beams of light. With no real need for chivalry or Bushido in the face of these mindless beings, she cuts each one unlucky enough to be in her path as they form with nary a glance. She has her mission and she's not going to let anything slow her down. She can already see the dark blue, rubbery fingers of the giant Heartless not far from the arc of the prism. Just a little further and she's got it... almost there...

Just as she sheaths her knives and reaches for the prism, something large grabs Emily and flings her behind and aside. She rolls across the snow as she tries to regain control, the harsh cold stinging her cheeks. She finally gets back on her feet in time to find her oppressor: a Lumine. Great. She draws a handgun and almost fires, but memories of Viesca inspire her to check the clip. White stripe... well, that won't do. She pulls out a few clips from her pouch, settling upon a red stripe. Before she gets a chance to load, she catches a glimpse of a couple Rays running off with the prize.

"I don't have time for this," Emily says, starting a dash towards the Rays. Like some solar linebacker, the Lumine dashes to intercept. It's a good thing Emily planned for just this, casually loosing a couple explosive rounds with her arm crossed across her stomach. Her biggest threat dissolving and the pack of diminutive creatures a good fifty meters away, she fires a round into the prism carrier. Just before it succumbs to having its back blown out, the creature tosses the artifact up to be caught by one of its pals. Simple, clean, and effortless.

So it has come to this: glorified football. These things are already starting to really irritate Emily, but luckily, she has more bullets than they do quarterbacks. She blows apart the Rays with mechanical precision as she continues her dash, each one passing the makeshift football to a companion. Her firearms teacher would weep to see her total disregard for proper gun handling, but if it works, why not? The last one goes down just in time for the gun to click empty, fumbling the prism to the ground. All just a matter of scooping it up now.

But just as she comes within a few paces of the prize, a large flying Lightside swoops right down on top of the artifact. Casually knocking Emily to the ground with a flick of its wing, it turns to make a threatening shriek with beak wide open. The creature appears as some type of blocky eagle, long rectangular boxes for wings. Certainly a fierce looking creature and definitely not what she was expecting. A snap reflex brings a handgun forward, but its unloaded chamber proves a boon as she realizes it's also a white stripe clip. With this bird of a Heartless flying off with the prize, Emily starts to wonder if she is not meant to get this prism after all.

Just as Emily gets ready to call it a day, a cyclone of wind flash-freezes the flying Lightside and sends it plummeting to the ground. Emily looks to the source to find the gigantic Heartless has finished its formation, standing a good hundred meters tall. Its shaggy fur and lumpy build suggest that of a gorilla, a stony face framing its large fangs. The white mist emanating from the deep blue skin of the hands and feet suggest an ice affinity, leaving no doubt as to the source of that killing gust. In the face of such a terrifying beast, Emily just knows she's completely screwed. There isn't even any point in trying to run.

However, luck truly is on her side as swarms of Lightside Heartless mount a seemingly suicidal assault. Dozens upon dozens of Rays and Lumines leap on like a swarm of rats, clawing at the fur and skin with an intensity matched only by their futility. The lumbering hulk distracted as it rips and tears its attackers off, Emily decides to take this opportunity to make her escape. She may not get another chance...

...still, in spite of her best interests to just get out of the fray, she would not be able to live with herself if she gave this prism up. No, she must get it; after all, if she can prove herself capable of bringing home the jackpot, can Riku really deny her capabilities? Steeling her resolve, she starts a dash towards the frozen statue of that Lightside flier. Falling bodies of vanquished creatures splatter across the snow as she runs as fast as possible, one Lumine landing right in front of her. She almost trips on the dissolving creature, but manages to regain her balance and continue her journey to glory. Just need to load up some explosive rounds and shatter that icy coffin.

And yet, she isn't even afforded that luxury. As if proving an intentional aim of the big monster, Emily finds herself rolled right into the ground under the body of some large creature. The harsh slam into the ground knocks the gun out of her hand, a short bounce flinging it a meter away. The large creature thankfully stopping just under her arms, Emily ponders on how she's going to get out of this one. Probably best to just wait for the thing to either get up or melt away; it's not like they leave bodies behind, after all.

In the mean time, she can at least admire the utterly massive army of Lightside Heartless coming over the hills. She has to hand it to them: they have tenacity. Sure, it's kind of a brainless type with no sense of self-preservation or tactical coordination, but they so very dearly want to take down this hundred meter walking carpet. It's fortunate that they seem to have completely forgotten about dear old Emily and the prism, running past both without so much as a passing glance. Have they lost sight of their priorities?

A few minutes of nothing finally brings Emily to wondering what's taking so long. The thing is just lying there, doing nothing but breathing with labored sighs... Heartless can breathe? She was always kind of under the impression they didn't need to... although it might just be a little idiosyncrasy this particular one picked up. After all, why did that one back on Viesca leave behind bone fragments even though she saw it die just like any normal Heartless, light or dark? Why did that one on Amaterasu feel compelled to smash her even when it had fiery breath? Given how much is left unknown of these creatures even after such luminaries as Ansem and Xehanort, there's probably so many things nobody is close to grasping.

Regardless of the biochemistry of these mindless creatures, she needs to free herself before she loses all feeling to her legs. Clawing at the ground as she tries to shimmy out of the oppressing fold of fat, the lazy thing giving a raspy bellow. Can it feel her? Not that it really makes any difference: she must get back to the task at hand, risk of angering her unwitting tackler regardless. The lengths of her escape reached and still a little too far, she takes off her helmet and fishes at the gun. Almost there... just a little more...

One lucky reach finally nabs the gun. Armed and ready, Emily is only too happy to twist her arm back and blindly shoot into the lump of lard. She feels the painful shrieks of the oppressing creature resonate through her body before everything gets lighter... both in weight and vision. The dissolving blob washes over Emily, her skin singed by solar heat and her retinas begging for mercy. The sheer glare of this substance pressing against her goggles leaves her dazed and disoriented for a little, but she's happy to finally be free. Given the lack of interest everything all around is showing in her, she's pretty sure she can survive.

Her vision starting to clear up after half a minute, Emily brings her dizzy sights upon the frozen flier. One dramatic bullet is all it takes for the whole thing to shatter into a shower of a thousand little pieces. She'd almost expect it to melt and reform just to spite her, but all the exposed 'flesh' dissolves into little white flickers. The prism remains flawless, of course; it certainly is built to last. With that out of the way, she just needs to wait for her balance to return and the blood to reach her legs.

A short minute later, her vision clears up enough to reveal a huge Lightside heading her way. With its four arms, metallic frame, chains of ammo hanging like frills, and excessive firepower, it almost looks like an Etoquin... in fact, that's what it is. It's basically that Heartless that left Emily for dead in the first place, but with shining white skin and deep purple eyes. To think such a being could be converted to the side of light is almost inconceivable. Emily tries to scramble out of the way, stumbling back down as painful tingles shoot through her legs. The unsteady hybrid of machine and Heartless scampers right over her, a brief glimpse of the prism lodged in its foot presenting itself as it travels overhead.

"Oh, _come on_," Emily quietly shouts to herself as the lumbering cyborg starts firing at Cenari's secret weapon, deflected missiles setting patches of the ground aflame. She can't help but wonder if some cruel deity is mocking her. Not only have events conspired to keep her away from the prism, but they've even conspired to keep it away from the Heartless as well. Why else would the giant hulk care enough to shoot down the flier? It's almost as though something wants to dangle this carrot in front of her face.

Still, she can't let this go. Loathe as she is to fight something so much larger than her with so very many guns, she doubts she can convince it to let her give it a foot exam. She swings the plasma gun back into her arms, aims at the aggressive mech, and pulls the trigger... nothing happens. A couple more empty pulls later, she looks it over to find the cylinder cracked and what appears to be a dire warning flashing on an LCD screen. It's probably a good thing the Yeo designers were polite enough to include a failsafe; she certainly doesn't want to know what kind of disaster this could have been otherwise.

Tossing aside the expensive and dangerous looking paperweight, she reaches back for her sniper rifle. Uina's design proves much sturdier, with only a little stiffness on the final slide into place. Assembled and ready for action, Emily ponders how to handle this. She doubts there's really any weak point she can exploit with her gun, so the odds of her taking this thing down are low. However, does she really need to kill it? She just wants it to surrender the artifact so she can grab it and get away; she can care less who wins this battle. To that end, perhaps she should just shoot at its leg to hopefully make it stumble and dislodge the prism? Worth a try.

Emily lines up a shot and fires it into the leg of this creature and just as she hoped, the prism came loose... however, the way it came loose is a bit of a surprise. Rather than the hoped stumbling and falling, the shimmering white skin bulges and swells to mammoth proportions. It only takes a second for her to figure out why: these are Lightside aligned rounds. Silly her to miss such a crucial detail even with the white stripe, but it appears her haste to do something proves itself a boon. She'd like to run out and grab it, but a narrowly dodged gust of freezing wind on the part of the mech is enough to keep her back. If only they would stop fighting...

Wait, that's it: why not do her part to end this fight faster? She'd rather not risk the wrath of the giant Darkside underling by taking a shot at it, but the Lightside disciple didn't seem to mind taking a bullet of power. She can probably pump this thing full of makeshift steroids and have it easily trounce its enemy while she grabs the prize and runs. By the time it finishes mopping the snow-driven ground with the carcass of this shag carpet, she'll be long gone. Sure, she'll practically be turning the walking death machine into one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, but it might just be suicidally stupid enough to work.

Emily starts firing round after round into her chosen champion, the creature's muscles bulking up to scary proportions with every shot. Distracted from all the power surging through it, one gale of blizzard breath hits without so much as a flinch. She almost feels proud to be making something so powerful, but she wishes it would stop slacking and get back to fighting. She needs the Lightside to at least start pushing inwards so she can grab her prize.

But the war machine just keeps standing there, its convulsions failing to die down as its muscles continue to balloon to sickening size. With even the Heartless mockery of biology taken way too far, one sack finally tears at a seam and sprays a viscous white fluid at high pressure. As more fissures form all over as geysers of shiny fluid erupt, the creature lets off one final, anguished scream as it explodes in a blinding torrent. A goldish heart rises up into the sky from the battered remains of the Etoquin, disappearing without a trace. The massive collection of metallic parts, too worn to hold together, collapse backward into a pile of junk... right on top of the prism. Well, doesn't that just beat all?

As mad as Emily is at fate for continuing to deprive her of this trinket, she has a much, much bigger concern. With no more Lightside fodder left for it to crush and freeze, the shaggy abomination turns its sights on her as it punches into its open palm. She can't tell whether or not it knows about her involvement, but it's not like it matters. It's going to kill her and there isn't jack she can do about it. It's not like she can use her pea-shooter of a gun against something this big. It's already starting its hyperventilation that rumbles through the very ground. Any second now...

But just as the monster arches backwards for the literal killing blow, Emily realizes the rumbles are definitely not coming from it. She doesn't even get a chance to locate the source on her own as a Heavy Behemoth runs in over her, feet narrowly missing as its massive body cascades the winds off to the sides. The new combatant doesn't even flinch as it rams its horn into the belly of the furry beast, a triumphant roar echoing through the air. Emily is at a total loss to explain this: she can understand the Light and Dark Heartless fighting each other, but these two should be on the same side. Why do they ignore their real prey literally right under them? Not that she's complaining or anything...

Of course, the Heavy Behemoth isn't so lucky as to score a one hit kill. Moaning and grimacing, the white-haired Heartless manages to push the horn out with both hands. The rhino-wolf thing struggles as its opponent finally manages to free the horn from its belly, not the slightest bit fazed by the gaping wound pouring a steady flow of black viscous fluid. If she thought the unending barrage of Lightside underlings was 'tenacious', this thing just made them look like twitchy chipmunks in comparison. She can't decide if she admires or is scared crapless of it... probably both...

The wrestle continues at its slow but utterly brutal pace, the Heavy Behemoth growing more stressed as the giant ape thing shoves it further downwards. Its legs wobbling with greater intensity the further they give, one snap movement brings the creature to its belly. With no more resistance to fight against, the dominant giant starts spinning the pitiful wreck across the ground, one full circle smashing through the junk heap before flinging it a good kilometer into the distance.

As if sensing that Emily has been allowed too much respite, a piece of debris from the smashed pile knocks her right off her feet and launches her a good several meters into a face plant on the ground. As if defying the laws of physics just to spite her, this object smacks her head back into the snow just as she starts to rise back up. She should just be disgruntled at her lack of luck, but she can't help but wonder if this was planned by that smug titan; it would certainly only add to its badass cred.

As Emily starts to raise her head, she nearly recoils in surprise as her eyes meet the prism right in front of her face. After all this time of hectic battle, constant loss, and luck conspiring against her, it gets dropped in her lap entirely by chance. Of all the random pieces of junk that had little chance of hitting her from that aimless swipe, it just happens to be the big prize. She was just going to go digging for it after the battle, but fate decided to spare her that humiliation. No matter how often she repeats it in her head, she still can't believe that she could be so fortunate. This is a story she'll be telling for decades.

Emily slowly climbs up to her knees, grabbing the prism with both hands before some new foe can snatch it away. Closer examination proves it to be the real thing.

"I'll be damned..." Emily sighs, tears forming at her eyes. Here in her hands is the proof of her competence, her badge of honor, her ascension to something more than a lowly grunt. She isn't so conceited as to declare herself a hero for merely surviving a skirmish of things way more powerful than herself, but it's not like her friends need to know that particular detail. Riku will have to be actively trying to deny her as any sort of possible love interest to ignore an accomplishment like this.

"Kiko?" says a familiar voice from nearby, confused. Emily turns to find Sora standing there, practically floating with energy with a blade in each hand. The blue glow of his weapons provide the only source of light now that the Lightside are all gone and the flames no longer have fuel.

"Sora?" Emily asks, her brain a bit too overwhelmed to come up with something substantial to say.

"Holy crap..." Sora comments, worry on his face, "...you look like hell..."

"Thanks," Emily says, slowly rising up to her feet as she looks over her torn, filthy outfit, "I just got back from there."

"Is that what I think it is?" Sora asks, tilting his head as he looks at the prism.

"Yep," Emily announces, feeling a bit too weak to smile, "You won't believe what I went through to get it."

"You can tell me later," Sora starts, his eyes drawn to the horizon, "Do you know what's up with those two Heartless over there? One of them just ran away from me for no reason."

"Huh?" Emily says, turning to face the chaos in the distance. It appears the Heavy Behemoth is summoning meteors towards the giant ape right at point blank range, the objects bursting to pieces with barely the slightest flinch from their target. The white-furred abomination latches onto the horn with both hands, electricity visibly frying its skin and setting its hair on fire. Even in spite of all this punishment, it manages to continue yanking the horn upwards and inwards as cracks start to form along the structure. Anguished yet determined roars fill the air, neither appearing to be dominating the other. Perhaps it's that old cliche of the unstoppable force and unmovable object at work?

One particularly violent meteor blasts a hole right through the chest of the gigantic ape, but much too late to save its master. The horn of the Heavy Behemoth snaps right off as the couple thousand tons of carpet recoils backward, the most shrill shriek of pain piercing the ears of everybody within a dozen kilometers. Staggering and leaking black fluid by the gigalitre, it barely manages to gather enough strength to bring one last downward stab of the broken horn right through the head of the rhino-wolf thing. The two veritable titans both succumb to their extensive wounds, white light bursting apart from within. Two pinkish hearts float up and fade into nothing, the vortex of dark energy subsiding right along with them. Where once two demigods stood, there is only ruin.

"...I have _never_ seen _that_ before," Sora comments with utter disbelief.

"...seen what before?" Emily asks.

"Heartless fighting each other to the death," Sora elaborates.

"You mean there has never been a war between two Heartless summoners?" Emily asks, confused.

"'The Heartless ally with whoever's the strongest'," Sora quotes, imitating the monotone voice of his source, "Every summoner knows this and whenever two fight, it always becomes a test of who can keep control. While they might accidentally hit their friends, I never knew it was possible to make them directly _fight_ and _kill_ each other."

"First time for everything, huh?" Emily comments, rubbing the prism as if to make sure she's still holding it. A soft red glow approaches from behind Sora, revealing none other than Riku and Chou. He doesn't seem all that different from his usual self, but Chou is practically unrecognizable. She's giving off this radiant pink glow all over, hair hovering ominously and eyes appearing as two opaque gemstones. Emily would wonder what's up with the pink alien, but she doesn't really want to know. Every new revelation about Chou bothers her more than the last.

"Kiko?" Riku says, mystified.

"Hi, Riku," Emily responds, forcing a weak smile on her face.

"Where's your team?" Riku asks.

"They got killed back in town," Emily responds, holding out the prism, "I managed to get this, though."

"...oh," Riku says passively after a couple second stare at the artifact, turning to face Sora, "Say, buddy, you know where that H-B went?"

"It and a hundred meter tall Type IX or X killed each other from what I could tell," Sora responds.

"...killed each other?" Riku asks, just as surprised as Sora was earlier.

"The ULH had a hole punched through its chest by a meteor," Sora clarifies, "But still ripped the horn off and impaled the head. They died together."

"...intentionally?" Riku asks, as if grasping straws at his reality. Chou's wild state dies down, blinking her eyes back to their normal selves.

"Kiko?" Chou says.

"Yes," Emily responds, a little annoyed.

"You don't look so great," Chou comments, offering her hand, "Let me heal you."

"That's okay," Emily responds, stepping back a little.

"If you insist," Chou says, turning her attention back to Riku.

"Kiko?" Sora says.

"Yes?" Emily responds.

"We have some questions," Sora starts, "First, where did you get that prism?"

"I followed a Lightside army to find Cenari flying out of a temple with it," Emily explains, "Long story short, I managed to get this away from them."

"Don't you love when an answer needs more questions to make any sense?" Riku comments, slightly exasperated.

"I don't know what was up with the Lightside," Emily starts, a bit annoyed at the tone, "After I was knocked out, I woke up to see all these Rays running around. I don't know where they came from and until I shot them with a plasma gun, they didn't care about me."

"...you know what?" Riku starts, sounding a bit agitated, "None of this matters right now. Let's finish the mission and afterwards, Kiko can _clearly_ explain what happened from the beginning."

"Agreed," Sora concedes, turning to face towards his point of origin, "Shall we?"

"Wait, what's going on?" Emily asks.

"There's something in South Canyon guarded by a darkness shroud," Sora explains, "I'm pretty sure it was linked to that Heavy Behemoth, so we should be able to get in now."

"Oh," Emily responds, following as the group starts a brisk jog. Well, as underwhelming a response as that proved, she's still happy to be back in the safety of a group. She can't help but wonder why Chou is so chilly today; the first conversation in weeks and it almost seemed obligatory. Then again, there's always the possibility that Chou is still not used to conveying her emotions... although she always seemed at least a little warm in the past...

The group overtakes one last hill to find that South Canyon lives up to its name. Figures. The massive fissure in the ground is around half a kilometer deep, with a sphere of black and dark purple energy not too far in. This barrier seems at least as tall as the canyon itself and probably a good kilometer is diameter; it's hard to tell from just one angle. Sora turns and walks over to Emily, his form shifting back to normal as the keyblades vanish.

"I'll give you a lift," Sora offers, turning his back to face her.

"Um... okay," Emily says, figuring he's offering a piggyback ride. Certainly not the most dignified mode of transport for either party, but why not? She climbs aboard the Sora express, getting quite the shock as he immediately grabs her legs and jumps right down into the canyon. The frigid wind chill rushing over her face and rapidly approaching ground almost send her into a primal state of fear, but she closes her eyes and reminds herself of her luck. After all, if a Heavy Behemoth is willing to come to her aid, why would fate let her die by slipping?

...but given some thought, the interpretation of that Heavy Behemoth as her protector is a lot more frightening than the situation at hand. Is that what the vision meant by 'Guardian Heartless Angel'? This is definitely something she can't share with the others; what if they interpret her as a Heartless summoner... made worse by appearing so powerful as to break the rules and avoid detection? Just like the dream visits of the black-clad ancient destroyer, the possibility that the Heartless will break the very laws of their own behavior just for her can only lead to a chest full of ethermute and possible dissection. Yet another secret for the pile.

One muffled thud later, Emily senses the end of her piggyback journey. Opening her eyes as she slides off, she turns back to a quick jolt from Chou's surprising proximity. How she got down as fast as Sora is beyond her, but maybe the fact that she's back in that wild glowy mode has something to do with it? Riku lands beside her a few seconds later, dusting himself off as he walks past Emily.

"Work your voodoo, my black magician friend," Sora offers in a half-joking tone. Riku sighs as he extends his hand and closes his eyes, droplets of dark energy identical to that of the sphere forming all around. As the energy finishes massing into a cohesive whole, he opens his eyes and flattens his palm upwards. The bolt of energy flies out at the offending sphere, rippling and reacting as the shroud melts away.

What everybody sees beyond the veil brings something that can only be described as sheer horror to those unlucky to witness it. Sora steps back as he recoils from the mere sight of this scene, averting his eyes as he groans. Chou, her state back to normal, falls to her knees and starts sobbing maniacally. Emily, so confident she could imagine and prepare for how the Unknown Faction might 'break her will', feels a little bile reach the back of her throat as she involuntarily twists to look away. Even Riku, usually so passive and stoic, stares on with jaw slack as he starts muttering to nobody in particular.

"That's just... I mean... how can... that... holy crap..." Riku rambles, the words escaping him, "Not even _Maleficent_ could ever stoop so _low_."

And right he is: for truly, no demon of hell nor monster of darkness could ever desire to create a sight as gruesome, as depraved, as proudly and unabashedly evil as this...


	67. Emily Broken

So it is here and now that the Unknown Faction, once hidden behind its faceless Heartless army, decides to reveal its ugly face. While one would expect the revelation of motive and intent to dispel that undeniable fear of the unknown, this revelation manages to be so shocking, so barbaric, so inhumane, the only mental recourse is to wish for shelter back in the safety of the dark. The mere act of witnessing this display makes one wish for a Satan to attribute; but truly, only a human could have the sheer imagination to ever dream of something like this.

Finding the words to explain this... structure would be impossible for even the most verbose language professor; it is not a failing of any such person, educated as they are, as it is the structure of language itself. No, the reality is that there are no words, no descriptors, no adjectives, no ideas that can communicate the sheer, unadulterated trauma of this creation. It is unspeakable, unmentionable, unaccountable... simply un- in every single way.

This work, this monument of depravity, showcases the worst that sapience has to offer. It does not so much include people as it includes what remains of them. One would expect anyone caught in this machination to be instantly obliterated in body, mind, and spirit, but some unholy power won't let them go. Not a single soul so unlucky as to be selected for this blasphemy upon the very face of reality is allowed a single second of respite. Body undying, nervous system preserved, and brain kept fully aware, not even the sweet release of insanity is permitted by this device. Unending, unmerciful torment for as long as it continues to exist, never filtered, never adapted.

Not a single square centimeter of this kilometer tall sight is spared an occupant. Not a single contour is spared of its constant, unending flow of sickening fluid. Everything about it pulses with an unnatural light; as though it refuses to let darkness shroud it. Something deeply, psychologically disturbing permeates the structure. It must be psychic in origin because surely, no configuration of reflected light waves, no vibrations traveling through air molecules, and no tactile feel to its surface could ever have an effect this thorough. There is no other explanation.

Still, one set of objects in this array can be described in rational terms. Three canvas television screens hang above and around like a modern parachute, tall enough to be visible for kilometers. Static flickers across them for a minute before they suddenly change to that blue and white flag design. Sora and company focus upon this image for lack of a better solution; averting their eyes completely only worsens its impact.

"Welcome," says a booming voice of indeterminate age, gender, ethnicity, or species through an auto-tune filter, "Sora, Riku, distinguished guests from the Daeh Yeo Mar Empire. It's good to see all the important players here at this last stand in the name of justice."

"..._**JUSTICE?!**_" Sora shouts, outraged. Hardly an unreasonable response.

"Yes, 'justice'," the voice continues with a little overlap, screen shifting to a calligraphic of those seven letters, "Justice... is dead. That romantic era of kings and queens, proclamations and reclamations, paragons and idols... is over. In its place, we have red tape, endless bureaucracy, and a total _lack_ of perspective on anything that truly matters. Where governments once condemned criminals for the crimes they commit, corruption and a limitless appeals system allow all but the poorest scum free to spread their villainy. Where they once built great monuments, they now argue over the color of the bike shed. Where there was once progress, there is only congress."

"Then there is the United Coalition of Planets," the voice continues, screen cycling through a montage of related images, "Never has there been a greater failure of a social program; never has something regressed civilization to such a sickening level. Whether it be their admission and acceptance of cruel alien empires, their steadfast refusal to intervene on Discord, or their inability to deal with someone so trivial as Maleficent, everything they do fills us with shame. The only thing they _can_ do with any efficiency is spread their red tape to every corner of the galaxy under threat of sanctions and possible 'police action'."

"No longer," the voice continues, screen changing to a montage of gallant knights in blue and white armor, "We have tolerated the injustice permeating the universe for far too long. Through the very creatures, little more than animals, they seek to oppress, we shall cut a swathe through their tyranny. No bribe, no negotiation, no appeal, no prayer shall stay our hand in our righteous crusade. And if they choose to fight to the last man, the last bloody meter, the last bitter breath, we will show no mercy. We shall fight until there is _nothing left of us_."

"...huh..." Riku mutters with a certain knowing tone.

"But that does not mean death for all who currently ally themselves to the false Coalition," the voice continues, image changing to a field of stars with names superimposed, "Our fight lies only with those corrupt enough to propagate the system. To those who feel as we do and wish to repair society, rebuke the United Coalition of Planets! Deny them your ports, deny them your resources, deny them your people, deny them your technology. Deny them the right to exist and you shall be spared. We hold no grudges and will cease our assault upon you the moment, nay, the very second you withdraw."

"For those too obstinate to change their ways, know this!" the voice continues, a montage of various one-sided battles of Heartless against the military appearing, "Those who continue to align themselves with the Coalition, whether out of greed, pride, fear, or simple conformity, will not be spared. No matter their stance, no matter their dignity, we shall feel no remorse striking them down. We accept that heaven holds no place for us and do not care if we are seen as monsters or tyrants in the process; history will vindicate us in the end."

"Consider us the ultimate conclusion of the Xemnas Corporation," the voice continues, montage of impressive looking technology on the screen, "We hold technology beyond anyone's wildest imagination. We hold absolute power over the Heartless: no force in the universe can wrench them from our grasp. With our extensive knowledge of Heartless biology, logistics, and military tactics, we can adapt to any force that dares to oppose us. No death toll will so much as faze us for each Heartless stricken only further strengthens our war machine."

"So let this planet stand as an example," the voice continues, orbital view of the planet on screen, "You will be shown that we hold no reservations in the waste of life or resource. You will find out first-hand what it means to oppose us as we tear this planet apart with the flick of a wrist. And as you hobble away from the wreckage, broken, bruised, scarred, and disillusioned, you will keep in mind that any organization willing to kill twenty thousand innocents can just as easily kill twenty billion."

"For we are..." the voice winds up, flag appearing on the screen, "...**INDESTRUCTIBLE**."

With that word ringing out across the landscape, the abominable structure collapses right into the ground. Thousands of painful screams echo out as a thick geyser of black fluid sprays from the crater in the ground. Tendrils of an unholy black smoke wisp out as the fluid evaporates into the air, drifting apart and fading away. The offensive sight no longer in view, Emily snaps back to reality. Sora and Riku follow suit, Chou's eyes still glistening as she continues to sob.

"...and they didn't even mention their name..." Riku says, his voice curious.

"What are you talkin-" Emily starts, interrupted by a violent quake that knocks everybody to the ground. Emily flattens herself against the ground for dear life as Sora and Riku hold steady on their knees, Chou limply tumbling around. Is she so stricken with grief that she won't even steady herself?

"Darkside..." Sora mutters, Riku glancing over with a dumbfounded expression on his face.

"That's impossible," Riku firmly states, "Where did you get _that_ id-"

With several dozen bombastic jolts all at once, small volcano mouths erupt from all over the landscape. Heartless gush out from these newly opened vents by the thousand, almost appearing as a spray of Shadows and Neo-Shadows. They all rush towards the crater of the giant device, many breaking apart and forming into a slimy black blob along the way. All the while, the quake dies down with inverse proportion to the number of Heartless out on the field.

"...how is this even poss-" Riku starts, interrupted as Sora suddenly turns and grabs his hand.

"Riku," Sora starts, shoving some type of thick keycard into Riku's hand, "Take Kiko and Chou to the ship, get out of here."

"What about you?" Riku asks, too stunned to retract his hands.

"I can _beat_ him," Sora continues, his voice defiant, "I finally figured out how and I have waited two years for another shot, but it's not _safe_. You need to _get off this planet_."

"You can't _possibly_ be seri-" Riku attempts, his expression stressed.

"Just **_go_**," Sora commands, shoving Riku's hands back towards his chest and dashing off towards the crater.

"This is _Darkside!_" Riku yells, a mixture of rage and concern on his face and voice, "Don't be so _stupid!_"

Alas, Riku's shouts fail to so much as even slow his pal down. With his companion back in his dual-blade mode and neck deep in rushing Heartless, all Riku can really do is watch with shock. Emily can't help but wonder why Sora is going on this suicidal mission in the first place. After all, her vision held that he got flung to the end of the universe... maybe that's why he's willing to risk it all? She can't remember if she mentioned his survival and return, though...

A low rumble distracts Riku from his friend's plight, a glance back turning his face to his usual determined apathy. With the tremors growing in intensity, Riku scoops up Chou and Emily as he leaps straight up the canyon wall. The shock of such a sudden grapple subsiding, Emily glances down to find another large stream of Heartless colliding through the canyon like a black rapid. She really needs to shake herself out of this funk caused by... she can't even remember now. Was that vision so horrifying that the brain can't even process it? Couldn't store it to memory?

Riku and his two loads land on top of the cliff side to find huge swarms of Heartless strewn across all the fields, rushing towards the same central point. An unnatural purple light pulses from the dark clouds forming over the landscape, bolts of dark lightning striking into the Heartless with no visible effect. The few unlucky Yeo still up and about find themselves overwhelmed by these waves of dark creatures, some type of odd avian Heartless emerging from their bodies as they collapse under the trampling hordes. Despite how much the process of Heartless creation is discussed, Emily never quite expected it to look so... freakish.

"Kiko," Riku says, bringing Emily's attention back to the situation at hand. She didn't even realize that she's standing on her own.

"Yes?" Emily asks, turning to face. Seems Riku still needs to prop Chou up as she continues her aimless sob. Nice of her to show such independence in these trying times...

"No arguments," Riku states condescendingly, gently hoisting Chou towards Emily. Thinking fast, she reaches her arms out and helps the pink alien onto her shoulder. How is Chou supposed to function in the military if she constantly breaks down into weeping fits like this? This is beyond even incompetence: it's gross negligence of her own self-preservation. Still, it would be wrong for Emily to leave Chou behind, so she'll just have to put up with this. She doesn't even really feel that heavy; perhaps it's all the armor padding? On both of them?

"We have no time to waste," Riku states, summoning his keyblade and running down the hill. Emily follows as fast as she can, surprised by her own steady footing. Perhaps it's because the battle has melted most of the snow, but even the mud doesn't seem too slippery. Emily is more than thankful for this convenience; if she had to keep worrying about her footing in this trying time, she'd probably lag behind or fall in the most spectacular fashion possible.

Riku leads the group of three around the hordes of frantic Heartless, cutting a path through the inevitable blocking stream as Emily barely keeps pace. The skies only grow more disturbed, more chaotic, more luminescent with every second. Miniature vortexes form amidst the clouds, spiraling upwards to nowhere in particular. A tangible sorrow and distress seems to wash through the air, bringing an unnatural doubt and fear to Emily's mind. A lesser person would buckle to this psychic assault, but armed with the knowledge of its source, Emily only gains determination from this despair. She will survive and she knows it; some mythic figure in the form of a creepy, underage girl told her so, after all.

The monotony of this journey finds itself broken with this latest hill revealing a strange creature chasing a retreating Yeo squadron. Tethered to a swarm of Shadows is the top half of a humanoid Heartless, its form starting at its ribcage. With incredibly stretchy arms and a massive, unhinged jaw, the creature grabs individual soldiers and tosses them into its mouth to be devoured whole. Riku suddenly stops at this sight, Emily nearly colliding into him.

"No..." Riku mutters, gripping his weapon with apprehension, "Not here. Not now. We don't have the _time_."

"What is that?" Emily asks, steadying Chou a little. She's only thankful the armor padding keeps her anatomy nondescript; she really does not want to know what she might be touching.

"Devourer..." Riku mutters, his face pale and stance uneasy. How uncharacteristic.

"What?" Emily asks, the name not clearing anything up. Riku turns to face, fishing the keycard out of his pocket.

"I'm about to do something _really_ stupid," Riku admits with shocking sincerity, placing the card in Emily's chest pocket, "The ship's over that hill. If I fall, get on the ship and get Chou out of here."

"I don't know how to fly one of those..." Emily attempts on deaf ears, Riku casually striding towards the freakish creature as tangible darkness starts to gather in his arms. A dark purple glow seems to shine from under his skin as the violet energy gathers into his keyblade, tendrils of blackness hovering out of his shoulders. Emily watches with confused awe at this change of form; she can almost see the outline of a misshapen beast with huge hands suggested by the bends in the air. Is it dark sorcery or, perhaps, something more?

With the so-called 'Devourer' fresh out of its main course of bird-like people, the Shadows carrying this strange creature shift their path towards Riku. The two approach each other steadily, each eying the other with a deep scrutiny. They continue this headlong showdown until with one snap movement, the Devourer attempts to scoop up the darkness-infused boy. It proves to not be even close to fast enough, however: in the blink of an eye, a red streak of energy that looks like a thick laser pops up where Riku once stood, going straight through the Heartless.

Everything seems to hold still for the longest of seconds before a barrage of dark purple explosions travel behind the rapidly fading line. The Heartless, stunned and confused, proves itself no match for such an overpowering assault. The Shadows carrying the monstrosity explode into dissipating blobs as light courses through the half-formed giant. One final flash bursts the creature apart into a shower of sparks, a pinkish heart floating up and disappearing. So much power in one single move... why doesn't Riku do this more often? Seems like it would only make everything easier...

"...gnnnnnnrrrgggg..." Riku loudly groans, dropping his keyblade and falling to his knees.

"Riku?" Emily calls out, starting her approach.

"I'm okay," Riku shouts desperately, shuddering as he grabs at the ground with one hand and holds the other outwards, "I'm fine. I'll work it out. Stand back."

"Are you sure?" Emily shouts back, stopping just as commanded. Tangible darkness flows over Riku as he convulses wildly, his grasp into the ground the only thing keeping him rooted in place. Emily has no clue what's going on, but even she can recognize this is not a healthy situation. Perhaps this is why he doesn't do this kind of move more often?

"...I'm okay," Riku says, relaxing his grip as the last bit of darkness flickers away. Outside of hair drenched in sweat, he almost looks good as new.

"Why did you-" Emily attempts, a loud crackling bursting through the air. The ground starts trembling uneasily; as though it's breaking apart at the seams. What could it be?

"That," Riku states, jumping to his feet and staggering right back down. Emily glances back to find fissures forming throughout the ground, slabs of land popping out and sinking downwards. Certainly no time to gawk at this new disaster. Emily turns back and starts a dash towards Riku, her footing uneasy as Chou's weight starts to finally leave its mark. She presses on as best as possible, steeling herself through the lopsided weight and growing tremors. A few steps in and her knees start to buckle; why does Chou seem to be gaining a hundred pounds with every passing second?

One crack finally proves too close, Emily's plate jutting upwards at an angle facing towards Riku. With Chou's weight dragging her aside and downwards, Emily tries to scramble up the side with little avail. With one lucky step finally locking her in place just a few paces from the side, the very weight of her neck seems to bring her head to face the yawning chasm.

What lies below is not so much a tangible substance as it is a lack of one. All the crumbling tectonic plates and falling debris dissolve into sheer nothingness. Not an inky substance, not a tangible darkness, not even a lack of light, but a lack of anything. A total, all-encompassing null from vague corner to corner... are there even corners? Probably not.

The platform now at sixty degrees and Chou weighing in heavier than a tungsten anvil, Emily's boots finally give way. Her snap reflexes and frantic digs with her three free limbs do little to prevent her downward motion, scratching up the dirt and stone all the way. Just meters away from the edge, her silver-haired savior leaps over the other side with keyblade in his trailing hand. Falling through the air at an unnatural speed, he digs his keyblade in at the halfway mark and rotates his feet to the floor. Sparks pouring by the gallon from his sword and feet, he barely manages to grab Emily's free hand just as he latches right at the edge.

With momentum riding high, Riku inadvertently lets Emily swing sideways. The impact of his grasp still fresh and gravity proving a harsh mistress, Emily feels her other arm finally give way under such intense weight.

"_**AAAAIIIIRRRRGGHH!**_" Emily involuntarily screams as her joints bend at all the wrong angles, loud cracks punctuating that shrill noise. The pain blinding and arm unresponsive, her reflexes bring her gaze to something even more horrifying: her failure.

Falling through that last bit of space to oblivion is Chou, her pink cape-things rippling upwards like streaming ribbons. The air, so violent and yet so unobtrusive, seems to hang still around her. Her tears, still flowing like faulty faucets, seem to puff out in the air and refract what little light remains in a rainbow incandescence. As if signaling a grave disappointment in Emily, her limp arm and lax hand seem to gesture at her failure of a guardian. Emily only wishes she could redeem herself and grab Chou's arm at this last second, but her own is too twisted to move and thus, she is forced to watch the sweet, innocent, pink alien flicker out of reality as the sheer nothing indiscriminately consumes her.

"...Chou?" Riku says, dark realization creeping onto his face as he glances past Emily into the darkness. As his grip grows ever tighter and shakier, she realizes just how bad she must look in the eyes of her hero.

"I'm-" Emily attempts, stunned as Riku suddenly spins her in a vertical half-circle and throws her up in the air. Before she can even orient herself, Riku hops onto his fixed keyblade, jumps upwards, and slams his upper back right into Emily's midsection. The force knocks the wind out of her and launches her high in the air, gravity wearing heavy on her body. Emily barely clears the tilting platform as she reaches the apex of her trajectory, Riku running straight up the sheer stone wall. With a graceful half-flip off the top of the sinking plate, he grabs Emily tight between his scissored legs.

"_Urgh_," Emily painfully grunts, her dislocated arm jostled by this crude grapple. Riku ignores her pain as he swiftly rotates a full 180 degrees vertical, summoning his keyblade in a bright red flash. The two start gliding forward on the wings of Riku's energy glider, ground crumbling beneath them. Certainly not the most graceful or respectful way to save a person, but it works, nonetheless.

Emily lets her head droop backward as her neck starts to tire out, an upside-down view of the landscape becoming visible. The brittle ground continues its gradual crumble down into the growing nothingness, almost appearing as a shattering ice surface on a warming pond. The occasional giant chunk of crust gives off a dark purple burst of energy upon sinking into the void, the dark smoke quickly dissipating in a sidewards spiral. One retreating squadron of Yeo prove too slow to escape the approaching null, helplessly falling into the darkness and vanishing without a trace... reminds Emily too much of her failure.

"Riku, I'm sorr-" Emily attempts.

"Not now," Riku sternly states, not even so much as glancing down. Emily realizes that now is probably not the time to talk; Riku has to focus on getting to the ship as fast as possible. Passing over the slowly sinking hill, Sora's blue ship reveals itself just one kilometer away. A rare few Yeo ships are in the air, flying away from the approaching wave of darkness. They're certainly the lucky ones, but if Emily's vision pans out, only one of them will be making it off this dying planet intact. Not exactly the happiest thought to hold while trying to save oneself...

With no warning whatsoever, Riku dives into a harsh swoop towards the blue ship. Emily braces herself as the G-forces climb to painful heights, her bones feeling ready to snap under the stress. Just as her jaw starts to recess into her skull, Riku dismisses the keyblade and performs another vertical 180. With a sharp impact across the ground, Riku cushions the blow with his back and bounces back into the air. Quickly fishing the keycard out of Emily's pocket during this short arc, he bounces off his back once again and drops her from his hold at the apex of the third. With a surprising grace, he lands on his feet and catches Emily in his outstretched arms.

"Open," Riku shouts, the ship retracting its glass window to reveal a cramped cockpit. Three plush leather seats are arranged in a backwards triangle, two bucket chairs in front of one short bench. Monitors and computerized controls line the entire panorama, a set of retractable controls hanging over the left front seat. Certainly not the most accommodating ship out there; if anything, having more than one person must be rather cozy. Riku casually leaps into the pilot's chair, depositing Emily in the passenger seat as he travels over.

"Welcome, Riku and _guest_," announces a computerized female voice with an odd inflection on the last word, the glass sliding back down and cockpit going dark. Only takes a second for a whole plethora of monitors to light up, giving this odd feeling of mid-air suspension through every surface but the seats and consoles. This is certainly top-line technology; the resolution is so high, Emily can see the tiniest cracks starting to form just underneath...

"Come on..." Riku mutters, hands gripping the controls tight enough to warp a weaker metal. With nothing much else to do, Emily bites into her shirt collar, grabs her upper arm, and yanks her shoulder back in place. Sharp pain surges through her body as she involuntarily gnaws at her cloth, but she presses on and yanks her elbow back in place. The pain ramps up to blinding, but she knows she's only worse off leaving it alone at this unfinished juncture. Another forceful yank brings her wrist back in place, with one final spike of pain shooting through before a calm starts to ripple back in response. Certainly not something a normal person could do; she's actually now in awe with herself...

"Systems online," announces the ship's computer, a low hum resonating through the hull. Emily nearly whiplashes her neck as the ship suddenly drops through the shattering ground. Just before the ship smacks right into the sea of darkness, it luckily engages its engines and starts a hover with less than a meter of clearance. She can even see the remaining pebbles blink out of existence... if this is not divine intervention, she has no clue what it could be. At least she can now breathe easily with the gravity returning to normal within this vessel.

"Dammit, Sora..." Riku mutters, shoving a palm-contoured control forwards with all his might. The ship hovers upwards at disorienting speed, climbing a full kilometer in less than two seconds; certainly no lack of performance here. From this new vantage point, Emily can now truly appreciate the extent of Darkside's damage. The enveloping darkness continues to wash over the landscape, its wave vanishing into the horizon; must be speeding up. The dark clouds continue their deep violet thunderstorm, the vortexes growing in size by the second. Off in the far distance is a pillar of sheer black, blotting out absolutely everything within its radius. Is that... Darkside?

"...no..." Riku mutters sharply, pounding his armrest in frustration.

"What is tha..." Emily starts, trailing off as huge, bright streaks of burning white energy fly out of the pillar at random.

"It's too late," Riku solemnly declares, yanking the flight wheel around and nearly snapping the throttle off in his forward shove. With nary a second of delay, the ship zips around and starts its breakneck flight away from the pillar. At speeds almost too fast to comprehend, the darkness-devoured hills give way to a vast, stormy ocean. Tense minutes of tedious waves pass by, the skies never shifting from their swirling vortexes or dark purple lightning. While Emily already knows the world to be doomed, even this bleak, unchanging sight seems to only further emphasize the point. With the ship going in a simple straight line, it's probably as good a time to talk as any.

"Riku," Emily starts, waiting a second before continuing, "I'm sorry about Chou."

"Now is not the time," Riku says without so much as a glance, a slight bit of pain creeping into his focused, steely expression. Emily turns away out of respect; this is the look of a man who had to leave behind at least two of his friends, after all. She spots a ray of hope growing in the distance; not one to believe hokey symbolism, she is only proven right when it drops into the ocean and bursts in a huge pillar of solar flame. The explosion sends torrents of water into the air, the liquid evaporating into a fine mist just as quickly. The rest of the ocean seems to drop in level as tidal waves start flowing towards the new hole in the planet; to think any creature could wield so much power so casually...

More streams of solar energy flicker in from behind, cutting through the air at blinding speeds even relative to this hardly-leisurely ship. As some drop into the water with predictable results, Emily's attention is brought to the forward horizon with its new land mass. While the speed and the lack of solid light makes it hard to determine, the spiky forms seem to suggest some type of pine forest. It's either that or a rather cruelly formed mountain... given the vague green color starting to reveal itself with the light of the solar burst, probably the former.

Forest or mountain, the energy blasts care not. While some bursts take their stabs behind, a couple zoom dangerously close past the ship. Riku adopts evasive action, narrowly missing the columns of solar fire... he doesn't give his piloting skills enough credit. Most pillars prove too close for scrutiny, but one distant eruption reveals a geyser of black fluid and rapidly decaying Shadows emerging from the shrinking flare. One such creature splatters across the windshield as the ship passes by, its surprised face visible for a second before the black fluid peals right off.

The ambiguous land mass gives way to another body of water, another tedious minute of uneasy waves rolling by. Emily can't help but wonder just how far they've traveled or how fast the clouds must be spreading to still be out this far. As if answering one of her questions, rays of sunlight start piercing through the distant cloudscape. While still thick, this section has neither the vortexes nor the dark purple electricity. She was so sure it was just another solar blast from Darkside, but any thought of its placement quickly dispels that notion. Salvation can't be far behind.

"Seatbelt," Riku flatly states.

"What?" Emily asks.

"Put. On. Your. Seatbelt," Riku firmly clarifies. Emily is only too happy to oblige, awkwardly twisting her undamaged arm and fastening the six parts with one hand. Ever-larger glaciers start appearing over the horizon as the sun appears to set, the dark clouds rapidly thinning out. They must be getting close to a safe exit point; in fact, she can now see several other ships converging towards this frozen landscape. Nice to see the so-called prophecy isn't going to come entirely true after all. With the hazy skies now clear of the black clouds, some ships start darting up into the air... what's keeping Riku from following suit?

After traveling for another fifteen seconds, Riku finally makes his move. He yanks the flight wheel back with all his might, the force smacking Emily back into her seat. A glance all around reveals the dark clouds rolling in like a permanent camera shutter, vortexes converging like one large sink drain. Ships caught in its wake sputter out in a shower of sparks, gravity pulling them right back to their doom. That's as good a reason to delay as any, but even Riku's deliberation doesn't seem to be worth much. The clouds are almost upon them and the monitors are starting to lose themselves to the static. May as well brace for the crash...

...which doesn't come. After a tense few seconds, the monitors fire back up to reveal the planet underneath. Only one last tiny pinpoint of the surface is even vaguely visible under the thick Heartless smog, its territory overrun in less than a second. One can barely even recognize it as a once-habitable planet; kind of looks like a dark purple Jupiter, splotches and all. Off to the side of the ship are a couple other escaping vessels, all heading back to the waiting supercarrier. This seems to be quite a few more survivors than the black-clad girl estimated.

With a sudden purple flash, the planet's crust bursts apart in a flurry of inky blackness. The outer layer launches outwards into space as a veritable meteor shower, streaming dark purple energy all the way. Riku starts frantically dodging the debris as he flies across the supercarrier, chunks of the planet tearing apart the floating city. Emily winces with every narrowly missed escape pod and collapsing tower, dark tinged explosions going off with every stony projectile that hits. Luckily, Riku's understated skills pan out and he manages to get past the wounded ship without any incident.

Things become surprisingly calm as Riku continues the flight away, the chunks of planet and destroyed ships starting to hang around like an outer asteroid belt. No other ships within sight appear to be alive, but then again, space is a very, very big place.

"Here it comes," Riku says, mildly surprising Emily.

"Wha-" Emily attempts, a sudden jolt of force cutting her off. A loud creaking noise rings out as cracks start forming on many of the rear screens, with some patches turning to static while others go dark. Through the haze of the still-functioning monitors, one can see the debris of the broken crust and wrecked space ships start contracting towards what remains of the planet. The light all around appears to distort into sickly rainbows as the sheer black sphere grows smaller by the second. The bombardment of these objects appear to do absolutely nothing, passing right through the black surface into oblivion.

"Come on..." Riku says, his brow drenched in sweat as he mangles the wheel with his tense fingertips. Emily is kind of surprised there aren't any displays complaining about all the damage; does Sora keep the diagnostics disabled or something? The sight of a nearby planet careening towards the dark sphere gives her a start; has it really become that powerful? How is this ship able to keep such a pace when even the sun is now moving inwards... although it appears they're slowly losing ground to the massive gravity of this developing black hole.

"Please..." Riku says in an almost prayer-like fashion, pressing a shielded red button on the throttle. With a loud crack that shatters a good three quarters of the monitors and an intense gravity that seems to peal lips back into the cheeks, the ship bursts away from the oppressive grip of the former planet. And just in time, for with one final, futile burst into a short-lived supernova, the sun and everything else in the system compresses into their final resting place: the black hole of Zima X-1.


	68. Return of the Lady Vain

Space is big; very, very big. Completely, utterly, terrifyingly massive. It's difficult to convey this to an average person; even the average science fiction writer can barely grasp this concept. They talk about systems spaced apart by millions of kilometers, but such distance wouldn't even scratch the trip to the next planet. Artwork often show planets in the shadow of their stars, but fail to realize that one can string tens of thousands of these planets in between and fill the star itself with over a million of them. Even this punyverse, condensed and improbably habitable, still requires a day or two of travel at speeds several factors greater than light itself. Even the simple act of imagining one's own solar system is quite sobering; how can one imagine themselves important when even their planet is but a speck in the ether?

Ironically, it's this immense scale that makes space so very claustrophobic. Even the most abstract mind can barely grasp the concept of nothing and as a result, tend to imagine space as something crushingly tangible. Given that one cannot live in the vacuum, the presence of so much around them is like being smothered; trapped within endless ice. The smaller the vessel and the more restricted their movement, the worse this feeling becomes. Of the great many tensions afflicting Emily and Riku, stuck on a damaged ship with nobody but themselves, it is perhaps this invisible stranglehold that weighs the heaviest on their minds.

"...Riku?" Emily says, her uncertain voice failing to rouse his attention. His vacant eyes, fixed on a cracked computer display, fail to so much as twitch at this noise. His slouched form and disheveled hair reveal a certain disregard for himself; as though he believes himself meaningless and forgotten. This look almost seems like an extension of the ship itself; he certainly blends right in with the shattered panoramic displays and the layer of glass dust over every surface.

Her approach ignored, Emily turns her attention back to her injured arm. It seems whatever kept the pain at bay has long since faded, leaving behind a painful ache all along the wrist. Unable to move it on her own lest a searing pain erupt, she still can't help but constantly prod it. Perhaps it's the surrounding emptiness or the desolation within this ship, but something about this fracture seems almost pleasant; maybe it's a reminder that she's still alive in spite of millions of deaths and a destroyed planet?

"...th... comm...r Ma...i Pahr o..." says a voice through heavy interference, "...are th...y su...ors..."

"Computer command _Falcon_," Riku says as he weakly thumbs a button, his voice dry and forced, "Disable beacon and two-way radio. Cloak on, dome screens off, view forward. Scenario 17 mark epsilon."

A middle-pitched whine resounds through the ship as the screens gradually shut off, leaving only Riku's console to light the interior. After a second of nothing, glimmers from the distant stars find their way through the rising canopy of black tarp, a couple inlay projectors shining onto the surface. With the traditional windshield view restored on this front-screen projection, a set of fluorescent strips light up from behind. One finds itself too compromised, however, and shatters in a spray of harmless sparks; Riku doesn't even flinch as they shower over him and flicker away.

Emily decides to keep silent, continuing to poke and prod her injured wrist in spite of her common sense. It's not like she really has anything else to do; no games, no books, no television, no crossword puzzles, and with Riku's pointed negligence, nobody to talk to. Just the empty view, her useless possessions, and her injured body to keep her company.

"...Sora..." Riku mutters in a dreamy tone, his eyes revealing just the slightest glisten. This is the look of someone that could use some comforting; after all, he does not know that Sora will come out okay. He deserves to know this.

"...Riku?" Emily attempts once again.

"Oh, for the _love_ of..." Riku suddenly barks, pausing a second and twisting his face to a broken imitation of his usual apathy, "..._what?!_"

"Um..." Emily starts, unsure how to proceed. Should she just go direct to the point or come up with a way that reassures Riku that he is at no fault? After all, they-

"_Speak_," Riku states, his voice already losing its calm.

"Well..." Emily stalls. Given his irritability, perhaps it's better not to start out with this revelation. After all, won't he question why she-

"What. Is. It?" Riku slowly asks, a frown already on his face.

"Well... um..." Emily stalls.

"You keep prodding me," Riku starts, his composure waning rapidly, "'Riku, Riku, _Riku_... _Hey!_ _Riku!_ _Listen_ to me! Give me _attention!'_

"Er..." Emily further stalls.

"_WHAT?_" Riku barks, his expression contorted, "_WHAT IS IT?!_ WHAT IS SO _GODDAMN_ _**IMPORTANT?!**_"

"...I'm... sorry... about Chou..." Emily finally gets out.

"Oh, _Chou_," Riku says as he glances away for a second, smacking his forehead, "Is _that_ all you can say? 'I'm sorry about Chou, I'm sorry about Chou, I'm _so_ _freaking sorry_ about _Chou!_'"

"...don't you care about Chou?" Emily asks.

"Oh, I _care_ about Chou," Riku continues with righteous indignation, "I _care_ that even if she somehow survives the corridors and pops out on a good planet, she's going to be shunned, enslaved, or killed by whoever she meets. I _care_ that Sora decided to stay behind and fight Darkside _yet again_ only to fail _yet again_ for maybe the _last_ time. I _care_ that King Mickey apparently didn't make it given that someone besides him broke radio silence. I _care_ about the _millions_ of people that just gave their lives for absolutely friggin' _nothing_. I _care_ that Maleficent's side project just _destroyed_ our last good army. I _care a __**lot**_ and I don't mean that the way Faith No More does."

"Wai-" Emily attempts.

"What _offends_ me, _Kiko_," Riku continues, his voice rising to drown Emily's out, "Is that _you_ don't _care_ about _anyone_ but _yourself_. _You _don't care about Chou; _you_ only _care_ that _you_ dropped Chou while _I_ was watching. _You_ only care because _you_ have been trying to get into _my_ pants since day friggin' _one_ and _you_ think that _your_ failure to follow _my_ order is going to make _you_ look worse and make _me_ less likely to give in. Chou, as a person, means absolutely _nothing_ to you."

"...how can you say th-" Emily attempts, tears starting to well up in her eyes.

"Is _that_ all you want?" Riku rants, "A famous boyfriend to hang off your arm, buy you presents, and coddle you? Is _that_ all you joined us for?"

"N-" Emily attempts.

"Because you show me nothing but this total friggin' _obsession_," Riku continues, "You _never_ talk with anyone else. You _never_ play any video games even though it's the only hobby you ever mentioned. You _never_ go to town on the weekends even after we started giving you an allowance. You _never_ talk about yourself, or your hobbies, or your past, or anything that paints you as an individual. No, you just spend all your time pandering to me, pandering to my friends, and training yourself to pander even more. Pander pander pander pander... WHAT THE _FRIGGIN'_ _**HELL**_ DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!"

"...I... I..." Emily stammers, no longer able to hold back her tears. As the salty liquid pours out like cascading waterfalls, Riku seems to only grow angrier.

"Oh, friggin'..." Riku continues, slamming his palm into his armrest, "_Again_ with the friggin' manipulations. _Again_ with the false sympathy. _Again_ with this damn crying fit. I am so sick and tired of all this crap, but you know what? Fine. You _win_. You friggin' _win_. You have _won_ this friggin' five month struggle and now, you can have anything you want. Anything at all. WHAT. DO. YOU. _**WANT?!**_"

Emily continues sobbing against her will as these hurtful remarks sink in. Why is Riku saying these things? Why is he being so cruel? She has shown nothing but faith and devotion just to get chewed out on these very virtues? Riku suddenly grabs Emily tightly by her shoulders and brings her mere centimeters away from his face, a wild look in his eyes and a stench of sweat in his clothes.

"If I _sleep_ with you," Riku practically spits out, his face positively repulsed by his very words, "Will you leave me the _**HELL**_ alone?"

These twelve words hit Emily like a city bus, the weight only surpassed by the sheer shock of something so seemingly friendly turning on her. All this time, with all her efforts to be the best friend, best companion, best ally, and best significant other, all he can focus on is the last? All this time, her idol can only believe her capable of the most base, animalistic thoughts? All this time, Riku has seen... in fact, continues to see nothing but a desperate, hopeless loser trying to force him into something he doesn't want? Is that all she means to him?

So for all these months, all this dedication, all this unquestioning loyalty to a friggin' mouse and through all these adventures, all these hardships, all these fights, all these injuries, and all these brushes with death she continues to endure without anything more than her wits and the equipment she carries, Riku seriously believes it was always and entirely about sex?

Riku's wild stare begins to dissipate as he very slowly and gently retracts his hands. His facial expression, so focused and narrow, starts to give way to a truly deep, shameful look. This is the look of a boy who realizes that he didn't so much step across the line as he ran by, screaming and flailing. With a sudden jerk, he twists and slams himself against the wall.

"No..." Riku mutters as he strokes his bangs through his open fingers, his strung-out expression reflected by the darkened wall, "Too far... _way_ too far... No, Riku, don't let it get to you. Don't let it... don't let it... stupid, _stupid_ me. The _hell_ am I _thinking_?"

"...Riku?" Emily finally interrupts, deciding to offer the olive branch. After all, it's not like they can get away from each other any time soon.

"...I'm sorry," Riku finally says after a long pause, "I just... I... it's... I... I..."

"...yes?" Emily prods.

"...I really can't talk right now," Riku finally gets out in a creepy monotone, staring dead into space, "I can't think straight. Leave me alone."

"But-" Emily attempts, interrupted as Riku flicks on the radio without glancing away. The tail end of some type of pop-rock-symphony fusion reverberates from the surprisingly clear speakers, each line punctuated by a pair of violin notes.

_I turn to stone,  
when you are gone,  
I turn to stone.__  
_

_Turn to stone,  
when you comin' home,  
I can't go on.__  
_

_Turn to stone,  
when you are gone,  
I turn to stone._

"And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the universal debut of the Electric Light Orchestra," chimes in a soothing male voice over the fade, "The latest offering by the one, the only: SLB Records. The master of sound, the maestro of our radios, celebrated veteran of the smooth vibrations Simon Le Bon brings nothing but hits to the faithful billions like you and me. Speaking of which, the man himself has descended from on high to join us today on Universal 202.5, Delicious Agony radio."

"Oh, you flatter me," responds a playfully conceited voice Emily instantly recognizes.

"What brings you here today?" continues the host, "It's not every day we get to hear from a living legend like yourself."

"Well, I _was_ going to talk about Electric Light Orchestra," Simon continues, "You know, pump them up a little for their upcoming album. While I'm sure you and I agree that songs like 'Evil Woman', 'Mr. Blue Sky', and 'Turn to Stone' speak quite loudly by themselves, I wanted to take the opportunity to segue into a discussion about the upcoming New Wave brand. Then I guess I'd give a little extra overexposure to Perverted Purity's upcoming concert movie, no doubt coming to a theater near you, and end with some witty repartee about UCoP and the Daeh Yeo Mar Empire."

"That's certainly quite laid out, isn't it?" the host joyfully jabs.

"I think I'm going to take a different direction," Simon starts, his voice gaining a serious edge, "We all saw or heard the broadcast, didn't we?"

"Isn't it funny how those Discordian nutjobs can somehow override so many channels at once?" the host says with an awkward laugh, his jovial tone compromised.

"Yeah, I can imagine many will dismiss it like that," Simon starts, "No, they're a _lot_ more than your run-of-the-mill wackjob. Their claims have been substantiated by their recent invasions and just twenty minutes ago, they destroyed the Zima star system through a surprise summoning of Darkside."

"This really isn't the stati-" the host cuts in.

"_Your governments_ are going to try to deny this," Simon overrides, "They will find a way to withdraw from the coalition while denying any connection. They will lie to you out of cowardice and stand idly by while these megalomaniacal murderers throw their weight around. No. We can't allow these terrorists any satisfaction. Go to your computers, your phones, your stationary, and contact your local government. Tell your representatives, your councils, your governments that you do not want your world to withdraw from the coalition. Tell them any group willing to kill innocents by the billions is not good for their word. Don't delay even a second; these next few minutes are the mo-"

Simon's voice suddenly drops out, replaced by a some type of mystical-sounding song. That's certainly a large enough topic for a safe conversation.

"Riku?" Emily prods, a glance revealing him to be asleep without any change in position. Well, so much for that. As much as she'd like to work out these differences, she'll just have to accept that it's going to be a good while before she gets that chance. May as well enjoy the soothing sounds of this guitar-driven, piano-complimented song. Kind of a soundscape almost befitting a spirit journey. She can almost lose herself to this song and the haunting voice of this middle-pitched male singer.

_Got a black magic woman__  
Got a black magic woman  
I've got a black magic woman  
Got me so blind I can't see  
That she's a black magic woman  
She's trying to make a devil out of me_

* * *

One can discern a lot about a building and its society through its hallways. What should be little more than a set of linking corridors can impart the greatest of impressions; after all, what else does one have to focus on while traveling between rooms? It's certainly the case with Hometown High, with its glitzy paint, elaborate portraits, and banners spouting platitudes. 'Hometown High - Best in the Country!' The kind of statements that sound grand and inspiring, but hold little context or meaning. Perhaps it's best in the country at basket weaving? The fact that so much money is spent in the upkeep of these halls reveal either an excess of funding or a misguided priority in appearance over such pesky concerns as quality education.

The students here seem to accept this design without any thought to its meaning. After all, when they walk from class to class, they're a lot more focused on their cell phones and thoughts of parties after school than they are of the walls. Kind of a contrasting group, with half dressed in a couple homogeneous fashions inspired by Rihanna and Beyoncé while the other half embrace practicality or some niche subculture. Two people stand out, however: a black haired, purple eyed girl in a flowing black dress and a brown haired, hazel eyed girl with an abstract, single shade body suit.

"Welcome back," the girl in black casually drawls, an oddly detached expression on her face, "It's good to see you. You have many questions, yes? Yes?"

The brown-haired girl glances around, her actions flowing like water across a rocky stream. It's been a while since she's been able to take in all the details. It's been a while since she has been able to walk this hallway, taking in the sights. Such a long while since she's felt in control while in this strange realm.

"I know," the girl in black starts, "You're probably wondering if I have the power of prophecy. After all, I _did_ just tell you exactly what would happen on that planet and it came completely, 100% true."

The brown-haired girl, so occupied with her movement and unconcerned with this line of discussion, glances over the trophy case. '1994 Conference Champions'... but for what? It's just a standard trophy cup in some chintzy gold plating with no clues as to what sport this could concern. Perhaps it's a trophy for a trophy-making contest?

"Can't speak?" the black-clad girl continues, "I guess you're still getting used to this. Anyway, Zima was always doomed. That was inevitable, but it wasn't prophecy. No, I saw the power of the so-called 'Unknown Faction' and knew they simply could not lose. It's like a fight between a wolf and a rabbit; even if the rabbit knows how the fight will go, it can't exactly stop itself getting chomped in one move."

The brown-haired girl moves on to a set of photo portraits on the wall. Most aren't too exceptional, but the founder of the school seems off. There's a vague shadow of an outline shining through the boring face of some old guy; as though there's another photo underneath. A look at the name plate also reveals it doubled; perhaps they decided to change the founder at some point?

"Neither was my report of the survivors," the black-clad girl continues, "If I never told you anything, nobody would have escaped the planet. You would be dead, Riku would lose himself to the darkness once more, and the ship of Yeo survivors? Forget about them. What I _did_ do was tell you exactly what you needed to hear to make this particular future come true. Funny how that works out."

The brown-haired girl catches a glimpse of some football player surrounded by people. Something seems to have them all laughing, none of them really genuine about it. Those in front of him give uncomfortable looks of approval while those behind are on the cusp of frowns. Nobody seems to want to be with anybody else.

"Then again, is that not prophecy?" the black-clad girl continues, "I told you a sequence of events and because of that, it all came true. Is that not the heart of prophecy? A statement about the future that comes true no matter what anyone does to try to stop it? Is it not prophecy to say the sun will rise tomorrow?"

As a bespectacled boy carrying art supplies tries to walk by, the football player casually shoves him to the ground. Most of the group laughs in exaggerated hysterics as they point at their paint-soaked victim, but one boy at the back just shrugs with a sympathetic look. Seems the two know each other or something.

"I guess you don't care," the black-clad girl sighs. A sheepish girl in subdued blues passes by this scene, careful not to make any eye contact. A closer glance at her face reveals thick make-up covering cuts and bruises, small patches lifted by tears rolling from her eyes.

"Thinking hard about Riku?" the black-clad girl continues, "You know... while he might _seem_ like he hates you, _now_ is your best shot at getting his affection. Where you're going, you're the only friend he has and that's going to send him into your arms. Take advantage of him. _Be_ that perfect girlfriend you've always imagined... whether he truly wants you or not."

With those words, the brown-haired snaps to attention. The black-clad girl chortles at this sudden stare, starting a slow walk.

"Oh, don't act so innocent," the girl in black says in a condescending manner, "You know deep down in your heart that you'd do anything to get Riku to love you. I have to admire your greed; you can't just be happy to make an advance and settle with a one-sided relationship. No, you need _him_ to need _you_. You need _all_ of him fawning over you. You want to _possess_ him so completely and thoroughly, he'll even say he belongs to you. And you think _you're_ the good guy here; are you _really_?"

The brown-haired girl maintains her unbreaking stare as the black dress stares back with a predatory smile.

"Have you ever thought..." the black-clad girl starts, her face awkwardly shifting to a hurt indignance, "...that your assessment of me as some ancient destroyer that must be stopped at all costs might be quite... _upsetting_? Do you really have any _proof_ beyond ancient runes with awful translation and folklore diluted by a thousand generations that I'm... dare I say it... _evil_? And even then, can you really _trust_ their opinions when they left so many careless pitfalls for future generations? Can you really _believe_ they didn't just lock me in this elaborate coffin out of nothing more than simple spite?"

The brown-haired girl finds distraction in one of the passing classmates. A short girl of maybe five feet tall, she has the most stylishly unkempt, organic pink fringe this side of the eighties. Her eyes show the same hue, both clashing with her simple brown and green school uniform with a monogram initialed 'HSH'. Looks out of place considering nobody else has shown any sort of dress code. The pink schoolgirl pays no mind to either of the two staring girls as she passes by.

"I know what you're thinking," the girl in black continues, "Did Chou _really_ end up in your universe? The short answer to that is 'no'; I just needed your attention. But I _do_ have control over her fate. You see, in both of her original timelines, Chou was prophesied to die by being torn apart in the Realm of Darkness. Not the most pleasing way to go out, but luckily, with the same influence I used to send that giant Heartless in to help, I can send her back to the Realm of Balance... or whatever it's called. We can both agree that it would be very kind, generous, benevolent, caring, and all-around _un_-evil of me to do that, can't we?"

"But there's a teensy little problem," continues the black-clad girl, her face going solemn, "When the 'precursors' bound me to this prison, they knew I'd find a way out. They planned for this with an enchantment designed to encourage me to keep low. 'Whoever allies with the destroyer shall gain total control over her body and soul, with a full psychic connection insuring a total understanding of the aims and intentions of all commands'. Maleficent doesn't understand that wording and thinks she can control me simply by releasing me; it doesn't quite work that way. However, I'm afraid she might have something up her sleeve... but if somebody else is already my master, well, she can't exactly do jack, can she?"

"Of course," continues the rambling girl, "You may point out this doesn't seem to have much to do with Chou. Well, you see, I found a loophole in my extensive binds that allows me to essentially pretend you're my master. Since the binds require that I protect you from all harm, I can pull fancy moves like making Heartless fight each other if it's the only way. However, even if I could simply switch my fake master at will, Chou is not compatible: she does not have a 'heart'. So in order to save Chou, I need a person to command me to save Chou and in order for a person to command me to save Chou, they need to be my real master. Quite a dilemma, huh?"

The two continue their stare as a pair of males start walking down the hallway. One is a teenage boy that appears to be a geek in the midst of a self-reinvention, glasses gone, hair slicked back, and a business-casual outfit of designer clothes. The other is an older man in a brown business suit, appearing as something of an authority figure. He listens with an oddly passive concern as the boy rants and raves.

"...that's _bull_," the boy rages, "The police couldn't have just _lost_ the damn video like that. Friggin' Dana or her dad _must_ have bought them out. We _have_ to get the press in."

"Before we do anything drastic, let's just resubmit it," the man consoles, "Losing it once is careless. Losing it twice is malice..."

"You don't have to rush," the girl continues, drowning out the passing conversation, "In truth, the moment Chou entered the Corridor of Darkness, I took my action. Another loophole I discovered: since my connection with you allows me to see the future, I can take actions that will _eventually_ be ordered. I can't tell you what choice you'll make because that would open a paradox and there's nothing the universe hates more than that. Sora can attest to _that_."

"So there you have it," the black-clad girl winds down, walking towards the brown-haired girl, "My offer. Of course, there is so much more I can do than simply save Chou. We can save the universe together or, if you so desire, conquer it; anything for my mistress. Don't make this choice uninformed: tell all your friends and superiors about my offer. Tell them about you and me and our history. Where you're going, there will be no ethermute and even if there was, they're not going to use it when they're so desperate for ground. I'm sure they'll help you make the best decision for us all. But most importantly..."

The black-clad girl slaps a grip onto the brown haired girl's shoulder, pulling her in for a forehead-to-forehead gaze into each other's eyes.

"I want _you_..." the girl in black declares as she points at the chest of the brown-haired girl, twisting her hand around and poking into her own, "...to want _me_."

* * *

_Take me down to the paradise city  
Where the grass is green  
and the girls are pretty  
Oh, won't you please take me home_

So croons a falsetto voice as the jangly guitar gives way to a harder sound. Emily stirs around in her uncomfortable chair, her muscles aching from her awkward posture. One movement knocks her wrist against the wall, shooting a surge of pain that convulses her upright. Her eyes open to a sudden bright light burn, squinting as they adjust to their surroundings. Through the blur, she can barely make out what appears to be a music video playing on a patch of the domed wall. Appears to be a trio of female Yeo in scrappy leather rocking out on an outdoor stage in front of an adoring crowd.

"Good morning," Riku softly breathes, his voice beyond apathetic. Emily's eyes now adjusted, she glances over to see Riku staring into his reflection on the wall. The beginning of bags under his eyes and hair completely mussed up show signs of a certain malaise; as though he no longer cares about his appearance or hygiene.

"...good morning," Emily responds after a little delay in figuring out how to talk. The lead singer of the music video starts on something or other; hard to make out under the heavy wall of guitar and cymbal crashes.

"You don't mind if I turn this off, do you?" Riku asks, "It kind of gives me a headache."

"Go ahead," Emily responds. With a casual flip of a switch, the screen changes back to its display of the thousand stars.

"'Paradise City' really isn't Purity's best work," Riku comments, still staring at his reflection, "It's just... I don't know. Something about it pisses me off. I can't describe it."

"It isn't their work at all," Emily starts, figuring any conversation is better than none, "It's... um... Gun N' Roses."

"I have no idea who they are..." Riku admits, his voice trailing off.

"They're just some old band from my world," Emily continues, "Kind of heavy metal... but safe and friendly. I think the only people I ever heard talking about them were in their thirties or later. Used to hear this song and 'Sweet Child o' Mine' on the radio all the time."

"Fascinating..." Riku sighs, obviously not caring in even the slightest. Deciding this tangent is rather pointless, Emily turns her attention back to her painful wrist. It has been so long since any pain has lingered, she forgot all about what it's like. With wounds practically disappearing as soon as they come without so much as a mark, this injury to her wrist must be something major. She really needs to see a doctor about it, but alas, she's just stuck in the dead of space with Riku... may as well resolve that tension now.

"I'm sorry..." Emily starts, pausing as she searches for the right words. Riku seems to snap to attention with that simple phrase.

"For what?" Riku asks, "Why are you apologizing?"

"I'm sorry if I led you on, or smothered you, or-" Emily continues.

"Stop," Riku sternly interrupts.

"Bu-" Emily attempts.

"I don't want to hear _you_ apologizing for what _I_ did wrong," Riku starts, "It was wrong of _me_ to talk like that to you. _Me_. You might have done your fair share of dumb things, but your heart is still in the right place and at the end of the day, you're a better friend than I deserve. Sora and Kairi are... were better friends than I deserved. God, I'm freaking worthless..."

"I'm sure Sora will be fine," Emily assures, deciding now isn't the time to talk about the vision, "...wait, I thought Kairi didn't come on this trip?"

"She didn't," Riku explains, "But with the UCoP security force pretty much dead, it's only a matter of time before Maleficent's new army recaptures Radiant Garden and I don't think she's going to leave Kairi alone. Not with their history. She might not be one to seek revenge, but she could never shut up about ideas for the 'Princesses of Heart' and she always did talk about the value of hostages..."

"What do you mean by 'Maleficent's army', anyway?" Emily asks, "That video didn't seem like anything Maleficent could ever come up with and Cenari seemed like he was trying to sneak out. If it was their army, wouldn't they hold position around that place? Why risk someone like me taking it away from him?"

"When Maleficent was still... _teaching_ me," Riku spits out with a shudder, "She once told me an idea she had. 'The universe might view us as monsters, but who is to say we will not be vindicated? History teaches us that great men are usually bad men, but popular history only concerns itself with stated intentions and greater results as opposed to real intentions and actions. Many of the greatest leaders and heroes were in it for selfish reasons and they committed a great many wrongs upon all they met, but what they wanted and what the universe needed just happened to line up. You can never lose by underestimating the moral ambiguity and flexibility of the general public.'"

"...couldn't just anyone come up with that?" Emily asks, "Doesn't every bad person live by 'the ends justify the means'?"

"'If you want to be seen as a great hero'," Riku continues, "'You must convince the public that _they_ are the oppressive empire and you are the righteous rebellion. Tell them they are either for you or against you and that you have no moral quandary about striking them down. Tell them that you are so determined, you will not stop until there is _nothing left of you_.'"

"...still a coincidence," Emily responds.

"She also talked about her 'theory of the nameless horseman' and how any attempt to incorporate the Daeh Yeo Mar Empire could be turned into a powerful social weapon..." Riku trails off, shrugging his shoulders with a sigh, "I don't know. Maybe somebody else figured this all out? Maybe somebody else simply stole her idea? She used to talk with Xehanort about all kinds of theories and we never _did_ find all of his journals. Mickey spends tens of millions of munny on every single scrap of paper by the man to show up on the black market; maybe one found its way to the wrong person?"

"You're right..." Emily admits, realizing something, "...why don't we save Kairi?"

"We can't," Riku says in a grave tone.

"...why the hell not?" Emily responds sternly, figuring 'tough love' might just be the right approach.

"A lot of reasons," Riku starts, "First, the way this ship's holding up, wherever we go is a one way ticket. Second, the academy is under lockdown and since Mickey is the only person I know who held the codes, we can't exactly just walk in. We would have to find a way past the barriers, fight our way through hundreds of drones and dozens of traps, and somehow find a working ship on a planet that is under martial law due to rioting mobs lashing out against the coalition. Last and most importantly, there isn't even a guarantee she's still there. I know Mickey explained his super-secret 'desperate fallback' to Sora and me with other people on his list; maybe Kairi was one of them?"

"So what?" Emily continues, "Are we just going to _run_?"

"Yes, _Kiko_," Riku responds, irritation grabbing hold, "Exactly... we are going to do _exactly_ that because Mickey organized it for just this kind of moment."

"...oh," Emily says, no longer brave enough to continue this facade.

"I don't get it," Riku rants, "_Why_ are you treating this like some crappy cartoon? Do you think you're some kind of freaking inspirational confidante to drag me out of my despair and encourage me to fight on? Because as much as I want to tear apart the 'Unknown Faction' and save the universe once again, we don't have any resources, any army, any intelligence, or even any _idea_ who these jackasses are or where they're hiding. There's no bar we can go to and beat somebody up for information, no underlord we can shake down, no shady friends that just _happened_ to hear something. Leaks like the one that killed Organization XIII are one in a _billion_ and Mickey practically sold his _soul_ to seal that deal. What do we have? Freaking _nothing_, that's what."

"...I'm sorry," Emily backpedals, "I just... I just wanted to make you feel better."

"I know," Riku casually dismisses, "You just want to help. You might be utter _crap_ at helping, but at least you _want_ to help... no, _I_ should be the one apologizing here. You're the one keeping your cool while I lash out at both you _and_ myself. Sora was always the one to keep me in line and even with him only gone for half a day, I'm already feeling myself slipping away."

"...maybe we could watch the news?" Emily suggests.

"Already did," Riku explains, "How do you think I know about the Radiant Garden lockdown? It got too depressing to watch when Amaterasu officially left the coalition and Simon was arrested five minutes later for 'unrelated reasons'... want some breakfast?"

"...what?" Emily responds, confused as Riku turns around and climbs over his seat. What does breakfast have to do with the breakdown of society?

"I kind of forgot how hungry I am," Riku says, pulling down the back of the bench to reveal a small storage cubby, "You know how it is; almost everyone you care about gets sucked into a black hole and suddenly, you forget about the little things in life. Peaches or pears?"

"...pears," Emily shrugs. Riku pulls out half a dozen circular tins and a five liter jug of water, shoving them to Emily's side of the craft.

"You might want to eat and drink as much as you can," Riku starts, going back into the cubby for more, "Cooling's busted; it's going to get _really_ hot in here soon and we still have... six and a half hours before we get to the gate."

"Wait a second..." Emily says, glancing at the static stars on the view screen, "We're moving?"

"Stars are big," Riku answers, returning to his seat and cracking open a tin, "We're too far away for them to look like we're moving."

"Oh..." Emily concedes, only half-sure she knows what he's talking about. She'd bug him about this whole 'desperate fallback' thing, but he almost seems content in his dried peaches; as though such a small joy can be spread so far. Emily tries to open her tin, but her auto-piloted motions lead to a sharp pain through her wrist. This has to be a fracture; even as her old, wimpy self, neither bruises nor sprains lasted this long nor cut this deep. She could really use a doctor... well, first, she needs to show her politeness by eating some overly-preserved pears. Yummy.

"...is there a doctor where we're going?" Emily asks after a couple minutes.

"I suppose you could say that, yes," Riku says with a dire tone in between bites.

"I think my wrist is broken," Emily starts, "It really hurts whenever I touch anything."

"Try to keep that a secret," Riku starts, "We _really_ don't want to owe him any more favors than we have to."

"...I don't get it," Emily responds, "Why can't we just go to a different doctor, then? It's not like this is something that needs a specialist."

"I'm not allowed to tell you anything more about this place than I have to," Riku says, darting his eyes to a side, "There's always the chance we might be called by Mickey or General Mithas before we get there, after all."

"I can keep a secret," Emily offers, taking a swig from her jug of water. There is nothing she wants less than to go into this situation blind.

"I can't say any more," Riku responds, "I already said too much."

"...okay," Emily concedes, going back to her dried food. As much as she hates this constant layer of secrets surrounding everything, what can she really do about it? She's not privileged like Sora or Riku and given her total lack of worthwhile traits like command presence, battlefield expertise, or basic competence, she probably never will reach such a position. It's lucky enough that Riku even puts up with her. Perhaps she should take up this offer of a willing cosmic servant?

But no. She really can't trust this person. She's gloomy, loopy, very passive-aggressive, and apparently a master of illusion. There is no real proof that she really has any kind of mastery over the Heartless or some type of control over the Corridors of Darkness. Most importantly, why would a civilization go through so much trouble to seal someone like her if she isn't incredibly dangerous? If 'simple spite' leads to an elaborate locking mechanism and a set of curses designed to keep her in place, there must be billions of these prism coffins all over the universe...

"...the Discordians have a legend they tell their kids," Riku starts out of the blue, pointedly staring away from Emily, "'The Genius Biologist: Doctor Moreau'."

"...o... kay..." Emily responds, unsure what he could be getting at. Still, there's something oddly familiar about that name...

"Doctor Moreau was a scientist researching evolution and specky... speciation," Riku passively continues, "He found some type of universal link between all living things and had a theory on how to cross any two creatures into a stronger, fitter, healthier hybrid. This angered society with thoughts of 'playing god' and brought down the full might of all the world's governments, so alongside his most trusted assistants, he packed up all his equipment and moved to a secret island. There, he continued his experiments and by using shipwreck survivors as his test subjects, started creating hybrids of all types."

"...is Doctor Moreau supposed to be a good guy or bad..." Emily starts, stopping as Riku holds up a finger without even looking at her. After a few seconds, he lowers his hand.

"One shipwreck survivor, a medical student by the name of Pendrick, was brought to the island," Riku continues, "Moreau, in his generosity and his view of the man as a fellow soul, decided to treat him as a proper guest. They wined and dined, discussed all sorts of science about anatomy, and started what looked like a great friendship. But Pendrick was unhappy. His envy of the doctor and his genius in the field of biology led him to snooping around the island. He eventually stumbled upon the artificial jungle where all the hybrids lived in harmony."

"I don't get why you're telling..." Emily attempts, shutting up with Riku's finger once again.

"In a fit of rage and jealousy at such a scientific marvel," Riku continues, "Pendrick attacked and killed one of Moreau's assistants. Realizing what he did, he turned his attention to the peaceful hybrids. Spreading lies and deception, he convinced them that Moreau is only using them for his own gains and intends to have them killed for pieces of their bodies. After convincing them to stop taking the medication keeping their human brains in control, Pendrick went back to Moreau and convinced him the hybrids killed his assistant and now seek to destroy his lab."

"Moreau, in his infinite generosity and desperate need for protection, offered to make Pendrick his greatest hybrid," Riku continues, still not looking at Emily, "And Pendrick, in his infinite greed and lust for power, accepted; after all, he knew he could not control the uprising on his own and needed great power to secure the island. Moreau started his experiments on Pendrick and injected him with the ultimate serum, but before he could finish the process, Pendrick rose up and tore the doctor apart. He killed all the other assistants he could find, but not long after killing the last one, he started to break down. Because the experiment was interrupted before he could be stabilized, Pendrick found himself constantly shifting across many forms and unable to control his body. When the hybrid uprising broke down the door and found this grotesque creature, they failed to recognize him as one of their own and ripped him apart."

"What happens after depends on who's telling the story," Riku continues, "Some people say the hybrids tore down all the buildings and continue to live in the wild. Some say without the assistants keeping the power plant together, the entire island blew up. Some say the hybrids died not long after and the island is just waiting for somebody to discover. Some versions just have Pendrick throw Moreau through a wall and leave his fate uncertain just so they can say he might still be out there, experimenting on a new island and waiting for the day he can bring his work back and save the world with his perfect hybrid process."

"...that's it?" Emily asks, surprised that Riku would bother with such a story in the first place, "What's the moral?"

"Who really knows?" Riku shrugs, "Both Moreau and Pendrick sound like dicks. Moreau doesn't give his other subjects a choice whether they want to be turned into hybrids and that medicine sounds like some type of mind control. I guess you could see Pendrick as some kind of hero, but his lust for power is shown when he allowed Moreau to turn him into the ultimate hybrid. Discordians used to tell this story to teach their kids not to trust the 'normals' and to never let a stranger have that much freedom on their property, but ever since they killed all the normals, it's now used to teach kids about the value of being vigilant about espionage and betrayal."

"Why do you tell me about this?" Emily asks, "I mean... what's even the _point_ of it?"

"Just saying..." Riku trails off, opening his last tin and wolfing down more dried fruit.

"...oh," Emily says, the realization of the point finally hitting her.

"Mind if I turn on the telly?" Riku asks, "I think there's a Blitzball game going on somewhere."

"I don't mind," Emily concedes, turning and lying on her back. Riku flips a switch and with a couple key presses, a mildly distorted video of some type of card game appears on the screen.

"Feh..." Riku groans, "Friggin' Tetra Master. Since when does _that_ count as a 'sport'? Seriously..."

* * *

Six and a half hours in this cramped ship would drive any person to the brink of their sanity; six and a half hours. Six and a half hours of increasingly sweltering temperatures has led to Riku's slow abandonment of his shirt, shoes, and pants, leaving only his dark grey boxers; kind of funny how he doesn't even care that a girl can see him. Lucky for Emily, this extensive suit is doing a pretty good job of keeping everything but her face nice and cool. The worst part of this whole experience, however, has to be the 'solution' for nature's calling: a 'privacy blanket' and the empty containers from breakfast. Lucky there's a jettison tube or this would get a whole lot more unpleasant...

"This is a pre-recorded directive from the United Coalition of Planets," interrupts a broadcast right through the baseball-type game on the screen, "The Twilight Black Hole Cluster is off-limits due to high radiation, heavy gravitational force, and ruptures leading to the Realm of Darkness. Lockdown has been authorized by Initiative G78 and any attempt to pass through this field will result in immediate detainment by drones intended to disable your ship with no accountability for accidental injury or death. All offenders will be brought before the council and prosecuted under full intergalactic law."

"Urghhhh..." Riku groggily grunts, rolling from one side to the other in a cascade of sweat. He lies there for a little while as fluids continue streaming over his reddened skin, his muscles twitching involuntarily. A pretty sad sight to see anybody reduced to, but then again, the temperature must be well past 60 degrees Celsius. It takes a full minute before Riku eventually raises his hand, wiping his brow and running his fingers through his damp hair. His eyes twitch as stray strands bat against them, responding with focused blows upwards. He freezes in place after a few seconds, his eyes almost seeming to glaze over.

"This is a pre-recorded directive from the United Coalition of Planets, second broadcast," cuts that voice once again, "The Twilight Black Hole Cluster-"

"Yeah, yeah, shut up," Riku softly breathes, jerking himself upright and typing into a console, "Computer initialize broadcast frequency Epsilon Lambda Entropy Kikuru Nine, Unicode Transmission. I am pleased to meet you acquaintance, will you buy my plastic steak and rubber ducky?"

"What is the square root of a bullfrog eating your pasta should a bicycle thief steal your mother's best Sunday dress and a Heartless offers you flowers?" retorts that pre-recorded voice. Riku turns off the television, revealing a couple blinking green lights in front of a giant mass of darkness. Nothing really tangible, however; just a total absence of any stars in the distance.

"That depends on whether they're posies or plastic imitations purchased from a man holding a newspaper in one hand and a contract for the internal organs of Xehanort in his other," Riku says all at once, exhaling right onto the monitor with all his might. A couple seconds of silence go by before the voice comes back up.

"Identity confirmed," responds the voice, "Please hold position for ten minutes while we attempt to contact designated command. Thank you for your patience."

"King Mickey seriously made you memorize all that as a password?" Emily asks, coughing a little.

"He does _not_ want anyone chancing their way through this," Riku weakly responds, "Do you have any water left?"

"I already gave you all of it," Emily responds.

"My bad..." Riku drawls, wiping off another liter of sweat off into the puddle forming at his feet. He lingers for a little as he blinks through more fluid, eventually reaching over and turning the television back on. The screen changes to show a news anchor set with a round table of older people in business suits talking with each other.

"...nny that you mention that," continues some almost-bald man with a smug expression, "Baum's statements _do_ kind of sound like that. It's almost like he's saying 'I never planned for this.'"

"While I do agree with your analysis," rudely overlaps a man with a quiff haircut, "I don't think he ever planned for any nation as big as Amaterasu to leave the coalition. Maybe some of the fringe worlds like Marley or Atlantica, but to lose a major economic hub like Amaterasu is like having the rug pulled out under them."

"Well, here's what I'm thinking," resumes the almost-bald guy, "Blue and white threw the gauntlet down. They showed us they'll burn countless innocent civilians and just to make sure we knew they didn't just view them as absolutely nothing, they played all their interviews at the same time."

"That was _tasteless_ of them," overlaps a man with parted hair.

"Then they somehow broadcast that ultimatum across every big channel and destroyed the planet," continues the almost-bald guy without letting that comment break his line, "You have to admit they're very effective."

"Agreed," overlaps an older woman with navy blue gamine hair.

"I hate to say it, but you're right," the man with the quiff keys in.

"So I'm thinking," almost-bald guy continues after an arbitrary pause, "'If I were blue and white and I needed to secure my power as fast as possible, what would I do next?' And after thinking about their message and especially 'cruel alien empires', I realized there's only one way they can pull this off: they have to destroy the planet Daeh."

"Oh, you are not suggesting-" the quiffed guy responds amidst the protesting comments of others at the table.

"No, I'm not _suggesting_ this," interrupts the almost-bald guy, "But when you look at it like this, that's what they're going to have to _do_ if they want to sleep easy at night. Coalition or no coalition, the Yeo aren't going to take this one lying down. By attacking their much-needed colony and killing their civilians like that, blue and white have basically insured there will be no peace so long as either of them still live."

"You almost sound like you're supporting them," barbs the quiffed man.

"Am I the only one willing to see the writing on the wall here?" almost-bald guy cuts back in, "The Daeh Yeo Mar Empire might have kept their cool these past... what is it, eighteen hours?"

"Nineteen," corrects some guy off camera.

"_Nineteen_, yes, thank you," almost-bald man continues with barely a hitch, "But in just those nineteen hours, we've already seen reports of them starting up the war machine. They're converting their factories, they're lowering the rations of all their citizens, and we practically can't see their planet under all the orbiting ships."

"They're just protecting themselves," responds quiff.

"There's 'protecting yourself' and then there's 'holy mother of _god_, we're going to war,'" retorts almost-bald, raising his voice, "Racial stereotyping aside, I don't think anyone will disagree when I say they're imperialistic, they're militaristic, they're _fatalistic_, and while they might play nice for now, they will go _berserk_ if they even _think_ they won't get a shot at justice. I'm talking _steamrolling_ across the universe. No other single world has an army even _close_ to their size or power. We're talking half a _billion_ soldiers in tens of _millions_ of vessels and they have another _twenty_ billion people they could start drafting at a moment's notice."

"Well, moving on-" attempts quiff through the very loud speech.

"And _even if_ blue and white turn themselves in _right now_ and give the absolute most _sincere_ apology in history," almost-bald keeps going, somehow capable of maintaining his normal speaking style at this major volume, "I don't think the Daeh Yeo Mar will stop. No, they want _blood_ and a _lot_ of it. They want to be _completely certain_ nobody would ever even _dare_ to rise up against them ever again."

"**You will **_**not**_** use my show-**" shouts quiff, visible rage on his face.

"_**BAUM!**_" shouts almost-bald at the top of his lungs, standing up and slamming his hands on the table, "**IF YOU'RE WATCHING RIGHT NOW, YOU **_**KNOW**_** WHAT MUST BE DONE. ROUND UP AS **_**BIG**_** AN ARMY AS YOU CAN AND **_**ATTACK**_** THE DAEH YEO MA**-"

Riku practically punches a hole through the control panel as he shuts the television off.

"God _**dammit**_..." Riku exclaims, shaking with rage, "What the freaking... holy..."

"What's wrong?" Emily asks. Not like she doesn't know, but it helps to give a segue into venting.

"You know..." Riku starts, calming down, "Every so often, I think about how I'm part of Mickey's army to keep everybody free and realize that upholding this freedom means people like _this_ can say crap like _that_. I can't help but think that even _more_ riots are going to start because of this show and people are going to _die_ as the mobs start lynching Yeo. The worst part is that he doesn't even _care_; in fact, he's _proud_ that people take this incendiary _rubbish_ so seriously."

"Why would anyone take him seriously?" Emily asks, "He's just some screaming guy on the television."

"Maybe people would realize that in a time of peace," Riku starts, "But with everybody on edge over all this, saying things like that is like throwing a match on a lake of gasoline... that's a man I wouldn't feel the _slightest_ bit sorry to see die by Darkside."

"...yeah..." Emily concedes, finding this direction just a little uncomfortable. Why can't some good news come up for a change? Such an attack should unite people of all different types into a unified cause, but instead, people seem to believe panic is the only solution...

"Designated command has failed to respond to several sets of hails," calls out that broadcast, "You are cleared to enter the cluster. Beginning auto-pilot data transfer."

"Point of no return..." Riku gloomily sighs, the ship flying towards the blinking green lights. Seems they're a bunch of free-floating robots of some kind. Interesting.

"Why are we flying _into_ a 'black hole cluster', anyway?" Emily asks, figuring this to be relevant enough to not be dismissed.

"That message lied," Riku explains, "Radiation is normal, there aren't any ruptures, and while the gravity is very dense, there's a safe tunnel a million kilometers wide at its narrowest point. It's still a dead-end trip, but through some unexplainable miracle, there's a solar system and planet just hanging in the middle of all these black holes."

"Who would want to live in all this?" Emily asks.

"I guess there's no turning back now," Riku sighs, showing a great reluctance to the topic, "When I said Mickey practically sold his soul to secure that Organization XIII leak, I wasn't kidding; it probably would have been cheaper if he had. Mickey made a _lot_ of absolutely _huge_ promises to my group."

"Wait..." Emily interrupts, "'Your' group?"

"Yeah..." Riku sighs, "We jokingly called ourselves 'Organization VI' even though it was kind of a stretch. There was me, the real Ansem under his pseudonym of 'Darkness in Zero', our kidnapped and forced member Naminé, Sora's frozen body, and the two people we're going to be seeing soon."

"...who are those two?" Emily asks, her memories of the game series fuzzy.

"I'm not telling," Riku states.

"Why not?" Emily prods. Another blinking drone starts to become visible in the distance.

"I have not forgotten where you came from," Riku retorts, "One of these people is very, very dangerous and the _last_ thing you want to do is act like you're even the _slightest_ bit familiar about who he is. He would have a field day if he honestly thought you played some video game with him in it."

"...okay..." Emily concedes.

"Anyway..." Riku restarts, "That guy was the Organization XIII leak, but he didn't come cheap. In exchange for his help in getting Sora back and sabotaging the organization from inside, he asked for a planet with a fully built and maintained city, unlimited funding and resources for his labs, and to be made what he called an 'unperson'. He faked his own death several times and we had to keep him off every single record; only Mickey and a couple of his most trusted allies ever got to meet him and he kept this place secret even to Sora and me until just a few days ago."

"Wow..." Emily responds, "We did _all that_ for a spy?"

"Organization XIII could have kept the war going forever if it wasn't for him," Riku reluctantly admits, "By getting Sora back and knowing their advance moves, we were able to track down and... assassinate all of their members. He was the one that found a back door onto their hidden world and to be honest, I think he was the one that caused the Heartless frenzy that created this cluster in the first place. It just seems _way_ too coincidental that his favorite planet would end up in this perfect hiding place."

"...I don't get it," Emily comments, "A terrorist selling out his group gets a _planet_? Really?"

"I've always had an idea why he agreed to this," Riku starts, "Organization XIII and its original predecessor, Xemnas Corporation, had the absolute _best_ technology in the universe. I'm talking a dozen things that could each make trillions of munny for their ideas alone in their _bedrooms_. It was just... _insane_. Xehanort didn't even _have_ to care about the munny; it took less than a year after they started to make the first trillion munny and after three, they were ten times bigger than the ten next biggest companies _combined_."

"Holy crap..." Emily comments.

"Then one day," Riku continues, "Xehanort just pulled the plug. Said something about the universe 'not being ready', canceled every contract he could, and got the company off the exchange. I don't think I need to tell you what Xehanort did over the twenty years until we _finally_ took him out, but unfortunately, we weren't lucky enough to get his technology before their planets were destroyed. I think this guy holds a lot of it and is slowly selling it to Mickey. I don't think it's coincidence that Mickey's favorite scientists are coming up with stuff just like things from the preclosure videos..."

"...I'm jealous of you," Emily starts, Riku casting a doubtful glance, "You're fast, strong, good-looking, smart..."

Emily trails off as Riku starts holding in his chuckles, his face straining against a smile. It looks really goofy of him given his mussed appearance and thick layer of glistening sweat... easy to forget how hot it is in here. Emily unwittingly gives Riku a questioning look, his eyes meeting hers for a second before he bursts into hysterics.

"What's so funny?" Emily asks, confused. Riku makes several attempts to explain himself, his laughs completely destroying all his words before they ever get a chance to form. It takes a minute before he manages to calm himself down to a semblance of coherence.

"I have heard a _lot_ of compliments from a _lot_ of people," Riku says through his laughs, "I have _never_ heard _anyone_ call me 'smart'."

"Why not?" Emily asks, starting to feel a little offended in spite of herself, "You _are_ smart. You know all this stuff."

"Oh, Kiko," Riku says in a condescending manner, "There's 'smart' and there's 'memorizing a lot of things'. You wouldn't call someone that has read every Fab Four comic and can tell you every last thing about the most obscure spinoff series 'smart'... god _damn_, it's too freaking _hot_ in here."

"Landing on planet... in three minutes," cuts in a computerized voice, going completely blank for that one word, "Due to damage sustained to the ship, the power core and heavy-thrust engines will have to be ejected prior to re-entry. Is this acceptable?"

Riku mashes a button immediately upon the last syllable, a large jolt shaking the ship. Two searing hot engine pods, almost appearing as missiles, shoot forward and slightly upwards at double the speed of the ship. They travel out of sight for a few seconds before a pair of tiny explosions detonate in the distance. Something suddenly hits Riku, realization on his face.

"Okay, Kiko," Riku starts, "This guy we're about to meet doesn't trust anyone unless he thinks he has some secrets that can 'destroy' them. Tell me your new name."

"Wha..." Emily says, the question not sinking in quite so fast, "...Marle."

"Okay, Marle," Riku says, "Marle, Marle, Marle, Marle... Marle. Marle Marle Marle Mar-you're some civilian I picked up on Zima and because this is a one way trip, I had to take you with me to this planet. He's going to take _one look_ at you and figure out that you're military; by telling him this story, he's going to think you're a spy. He's going to pull you aside at some point and tell you he knows what you're up to; he doesn't, but he'll say that anyway. He'll tell you that if he _thinks_ you'll do something out of line, he'll use this information to destroy you. Nod your head, tell him you'll follow his rules, and try to stay away from him after that."

"He sounds like a really bad person..." Emily comments.

"Oh, he is," Riku says, "This is the man who sold out his eleven working partners of twenty five years. I don't care what Mickey says: anyone who puts up with twenty years of kidnapping and mass murder is _not_ defecting out of morality..."

"Thirty seconds to re-entry," calls out the computerized voice. Riku brings his seat back upright and fastens himself in, Emily following suit. Doesn't take a genius to see the planet already taking up the entire view screen.

"Here we go..." Riku solemnly sighs, staring at the screen in trepidation. Just as individual cloud clusters start showing up, the ship shudders as if hitting a series of glass panes. What little remains of the panoramic monitors crack and shatter, with a constant trickling noise from little droplets of glass trembling on the ground. Bright orange streaks of light start trailing across the hull as the nose heats up from red to white, warping and cracking with each second. Quite a worrying sight, with the damage slowly traveling backwards.

"Just. A. Lit. Tle. More..." Riku enunciates, staring at the slowly fading screen. The ship pierces headfirst into the clouds, the screen completely blanked out by white. Emily jolts in her seat as loud clanks ring out, each one accompanied with a sharp twist in either direction. One such jerk suddenly brings a huge amount of gravity, G-forces practically flattening Emily to her seat. She can almost feel the back of the chair bending at its joint...

Luckily, the gravity smooths out as the clouds give way, a view of the ground coming up. Decaying forests of a sickly brown stretch as far as the eye can see, with almost no grass anywhere. Really a bleak sight no matter how one interprets it. Riku presses a couple buttons, sudden air breezing through the cockpit. Riku seems almost ecstatic as he cranks his head back in the breeze, his hair blowing backwards with sweat splattering across his headrest. Another couple button presses dismiss this gust, Riku turning to face Emily.

"Ki... Marle," Riku says, squinting one of his eyes with his correction, "Marle, Marle, Marle, Marle, Marle, Marle, Marle, Marle..."

"...what?" Emily asks, trying not to sound annoyed.

"What are you wearing under the suit?" Riku asks.

"My blue mesh suit..." Emily answers, waiting a second for a response, "...grey socks, black sports bra, black pant-"

"_Okay_," Riku interrupts with an inflection, "Take off your climate suit and stuff it in the trunk right now."

"But-" Emily protests, not feeling safe in this dying ship.

"_Now_," Riku commands, reaching over and unbuckling Emily's seatbelt with a single press. Kind of rude, but if Riku is so insistent, what choice does she have? Emily stretches behind and yanks her suit's buckle off, unzipping down to the waist and shedding the outfit like a snake skin. She tosses the outfit and helmet into the cubby hole and slams the bench back in place, turning back into her chair and fastening herself in. Makes sense now: a high grade military climate suit looks just a little too suspicious on a 'civilian' for even Riku to 'miss'.

"We are nearing your destination," the computer cuts in, "Auto-pilot disabling in five..."

Riku grabs the flight wheel, four seconds bringing a sudden drop as the controls seem to drag his arms forward. He manages to get the nose back upright under much stress just as the silhouette of a city starts rising in the distance, but this action seems to be the final straw on the projectors as they burst in a million spark geyser. Riku blinks away the sparks as he presses a couple buttons on a keyboard, the entire top half of the ship pealing away and snapping off. Once again, Emily finds herself planted into her seat by the force of the wind, but for some reason, it's not too loud... weird...

"Come on... give me a landing spot..." Riku mutters, staring downwards at the sprawling city. Perhaps it's the unusually dim sun, but this place appears kind of dull and sleepy. Every building is some type of brown, the only real variance being the shade and the occasional grey. Building heights seem fairly uniform at five stories, with sloping hills and the occasional plaza. Every last patch of ground is paved with rustic bricks reminiscent of old Eastern Europe. Nothing seems terribly technological; the only visible things are lamp posts and a high clock tower on what seems to be a train station...

"...I know this place," Emily says with realization.

"No, you don't, _Marle_," Riku retorts, the emphasis more for his own benefit, "This planet was deleted from every public record and you are a colonist bumpkin. Please act like it."

"...sorry," Emily responds.

"This is going to suck..." Riku comments, easing the ship into a slow bank. He circles the town a couple times as the ship slows down, his arms strained to keep the controls upright. One circle finally proves too much for him, the ship sagging downwards not even fast enough for a highway. Riku manages to float the ship just a little longer towards the train station square, crashing right through the flimsy stone wall on the edge. The ship scrapes through the pavement and launches bricks into the air as it grinds to a halt short of a cliff, just barely knocking over the stone wall.

"You have arrived at your destinaatttiiiioonononononbzrt," says the computer voice, its pace slowing down and tone going down by a couple octaves before finally dying in a blip of static. Riku exhales deeply, closing his eyes and resting his head against the wheel.

"Thank lord..." Riku says, giving a couple exasperated chuckles in spite of himself. Emily can't help but feel relieved to finally be on solid ground once again. Sadly, with all the possible luxuries in the world that are now available, there is nothing more she wants than to just go to a real bathroom, use a real toilet, and then spend an hour in the shower.

Off in the distance by this twisting road walled by buildings, Emily catches a glimpse of an approaching figure turning the corner. The first thing she notices of this tall, thin figure is the majesty of the flowing white lab coat; whereas one would just expect a simple outfit kept as still as possible, he wears it like a flowing cape. It almost seems to billow behind him without any major wind, but even with his moderate-length hair done in pointy spikes, it remains unflinching. A little closer reveals two small markings under his light-green eyes, appearing as purple, upside-down teardrops... wait... could it be?

"Yo, Rikuuuuu~!" calls out the man in the jubilant tone of a best buddy, arms outstretched upwards with hands facing the sky, "Long time, no see!"


	69. Huh Huh, Huh Huh! Heh Heh, Heh Heh!

There's a certain disconnect between what Riku explained on the trip and what seems evident; as though Emily has to choose sides on this issue. On the one hand, Riku seemed completely insistent in his description of this person as a distrustful, dishonest, easily corrupted person with no sense of loyalty whatsoever. On the other hand, if it's the person she thinks it is, that would make no sense. He's so very outgoing and loyal to his friends in the games... why would he have a sudden 180 here when everybody else seems fairly consistent? It's always possible it's just somebody that looks very similar...

"...hello, Axel," Riku finally calls out as he lifts his head, his voice wary. Well, that settles that. Emily will just have to wait and see how this goes.

"Aww, what's wrong?" Axel asks in a coy tone, about a hundred meters away, "Not happy to see me after a whole year? You wound me, Riku: right here where my heart should be. Stab, stab, splurt."

For some reason, the gestures Axel makes to go along with this amuses Emily. Very light-hearted and comical even as he pretends to stab himself. Seems kind of weird to see a Nobody acting like this even with all the descriptions she read... is he a Nobody? He did just say 'where my heart should be'...

"Sorry, Axel," Riku lies, fishing in the back seat for his clothes, "It was just a little rough getting here."

"I can tell," Axel says, fifty meters away, "Sora's gonna _kill_ you when he sees what you did to his ship... that's still his ship, right?"

"Yeah..." Riku admits, hastily sliding his shirt on.

"What's up with the beach bod?" Axel asks, his head tilted, "I know you like to show off your six pack and rippling biceps and all, but in a space ship? Really? You need to wait until you're at a beach with a lot of pretty girls so you can be all... unh! Rawr! Woof! Check this out!"

"Cooling died on the way here..." Riku says as he pulls his pants up, casting a doubtful glance on Emily as she starts chuckling involuntarily. What can she say? Axel looks really goofy making body building poses while walking and it's only made funnier by his lanky figure. Not exactly Charles Atlas or Arnold Schwarzenegger here.

"Who's this fine young lass I see?" Axel asks, only ten meters away, "She's almost as big as _you_ are."

"This is Marle," Riku answers, his dishonesty completely imperceptible even to Emily, "She's a colonist. There was a disaster on my last mission and I had to take her with me."

"Disaster, huh?" Axel repeats as he comes to a stop, his voice dying down a little as he gazes downwards, "So I suppose the king is dead... long live the king..."

Off in the distance, Emily catches a glimpse of another approaching figure. A black-haired girl of maybe 5'4", she has what seems like a fairly effortless gamine hairstyle barely reaching neck level. A couple spiky clumps of bangs frame the right side of her face, almost obscuring one of her deep blue eyes. Her diminutive stance and anemic build seem to suggest delayed puberty, but something about her movement suggests this is as big as she's going to get. Unlike Axel, she doesn't wear her lab coat like a cloak, but she does seem to have some type of black cape or something. Hard to make out at this distance...

"Well, anyway," Axel says, perking right back up with a wide smile, "I'm so glad to see an old friend like you! You wouldn't _believe_ how lonely it gets out here with just me and Xion. Tell 'em, Xion!"

"Very lonely," the girl named Xion responds in an obligatory voice, barely audible from a hundred meters away. She's obviously not nearly as into this as Axel.

"Come on, don't just sit there," Axel says, all smiles and grins as holds his arms up to the ship, "Let me help you down."

Riku casts an aside glance to Emily before he rises from his seat, pointedly ignoring Axel's offer as he jumps off the other side of the ship. Emily figures she may as well try to get in Axel's good graces; after all, given the cover story, she has no reason not to trust him. As she unbuckles herself and allows Axel to help her down with just her good hand, she can't help but find something a bit off in his stare. Kind of a dead look that follows her robotically, his head only moving to adjust as the eyes reach their walls. He continues to watch Emily as she brushes herself off, stretching out all those hours of sitting in a chair.

"So, sweet thing," Axel starts, smile on his face, "You _can_ talk, right? You know, modify the wind coming out of your lung through your vocal chords, tongue, and jaw positions?"

"...yes," Emily responds.

"I guess loudmouth Riku here did all the introductions for us," Axel jestfully prods, Riku rolling his eyes behind his back, "But let's pretend he didn't. My name is Axel and you are...?"

"Marle," Emily responds.

"Ah, Marle," Axel says, "Gnarly Marle. My, I just can't get over how _tall_ you are. So _big_ and _strong_. You must work out."

"Yeah..." Emily responds, unsure how to respond.

"Xion! Come meet the new girl!" Axel says, motioning towards Xion in the process. Now that she's only a few paces away, Emily is only more baffled by this thing on her back. Appears to be some kind of thick ruffled mantle, widening from the top down like a triangle and ending in a couple dangling strands of cloth. Very weird...

"Hi," Xion says, forcing a smile on her face, "Pleased to meet you, Marle."

"My pleasure," Emily responds. She honestly has no clue whatsoever who this person is. Nothing in any of the games she ever played had so much as a passing reference. At least that bodes well for her; it's hard enough pretending Axel is a stranger.

"Well, then," Axel starts, "I hate to rain on this parade, but you guys smell like you spent all day in a sauna."

"We sort of did," Riku responds.

"Let's head to the Twilight Gothica," Axel offers, "Five star accommodations, best in town! A President's Suite for _each_ of you! My treat, of course."

Xion dutifully turns around and starts walking towards that alley, reaching behind over her shoulder and motioning to follow with her index and middle fingers. As Riku passes by with a forced tunnel vision, Axel points at himself, his eyes, and Emily in one smooth motion while mouthing 'I see you'. Emily ignores it as she turns and follows the pair, Axel speed-walking up next to Riku.

"So, Riku, tell me," Axel starts, "What exactly happened to bring you to this neck of the woods?"

"Classified information," Riku curtly says, completely shooting Axel down.

"Oh, come on, buddy," Axel says with a prodding smile, "You already kind of told me that a planet got destroyed and took Sora and Mickey with it. The way you crashed the ship and its cooling problems, I'm guessing... Darkside? Come-on, don't leave me out of the loop!"

"No," Riku sternly states.

"I'll get it out of you eventually," Axel says with a playful point, Riku turning his head slightly away, "At least tell me about the outside universe. Is that old devil Maleficent still up to her usual tricks?"

"...yes..." Riku softly says, annoyed. Axel stares at Riku's side quizzically, his smile kind of losing its force into a blank expression. Emily would find his loss of steam kind of interesting, but how can she focus with Xion in front of her? This thing on her back is just so utterly baffling in every way. At a glance, this black mantle doesn't seem to really be attached in any practical way. The lab coat seems to have a V cut to accommodate this and neither the neck nor shoulders show any straps. Perhaps it's attached by a belt around the chest?

"_Well_, then," Axel suddenly spouts out, smiling hard, "I've been doing _great_, thanks for asking. I have a lab, a dedicated assistant, and my research is going to _change the universe_! I'm talking _boffo_ stuff! I have the solutions to mass obesity, urban blight, and transportation all rolled up in one sweet little package! It's gonna knock your _socks_ off!"

"Sounds fun," Riku dismisses. The group comes up to a fancy hotel, neglect wearing down its exterior. A once respectable, now gaudy sign hanging over the door reads 'Twilight Gothica', neon bulbs visible through its decaying exterior and silver plating tarnished beyond repair. The architecture itself is fairly interesting, with sharp corners and imitation-marble columns. On either side of the door are screeching gargoyles with unhinged jaws, carved out of an ash-tinted marble. Kind of looks like a Gothic British front to a wooden Victorian estate. Axel tries to open the door to no avail.

"Oh, bother," Axel sighs, "I'm going to have to go get the keys."

Just as Axel starts to walk away, Xion quietly walks towards the door. With a casual downwards arm swing, an aquamarine keyblade summons into her hand and slashes right through the door locks. Emily kind of blinks in surprise at this; something Axel appears to notice. Why does Xion have a keyblade? Aren't there only two in the universe? Riku doesn't even flinch at this; does he know something? Axel turns right around and heads inside, Xion desummoning the keyblade and following alongside.

"Don't worry," Axel says, leading Emily and Riku through the dark, dusty lobby, "I'll show you the labs soon enough. I know you just can't _possibly_ curb your enthusiasm, Riku, but you're just going to have to try, okay? Okay? Good. Xion?"

"Yes?" Xion asks, turning to face Axel.

"See if you can get the power and water back on," Axel requests, his voice now very formal, "Might want to send for some drones to clean the place up."

"Sure thing," Xion says, her voice still devoid of emotion. In spite of everything her parents ever told her about the lack of politeness to stare, Emily still can't help but follow Xion with her eyes as she passes by. A closer look at this black thing reveals something of an organic pattern; neither woven nor pressed. Very fluffy, but not by fur; appears to be a huge collection of streaming, vaguely triangle-shaped bits of velvet-imitation all stemming from one big clump of something. Emily snaps back to attention upon the realization that Riku and Axel are both looking at her suspiciously.

"Good old Xion," Axel says, obviously trying to break the mood, "Where would I be without her? Anyway, you guys want the same room or differe-"

"Different," Riku quickly answers, not even bothering to wait, "Different floors, too."

"Sure thing, my main man," Axel confirms jubilantly with a playful salute, walking over to the front desk and leaping right over in a puff of dust. He casually elbows right through one of the small wooden cabinets, grabbing a pair of old-fashioned skeleton keys on either end. As he leaps back over the desk, he grabs a cap and tosses it behind his back onto his head.

"Any luggage?" Axel asks, "I guess it would have helped to ask that back at the ship, huh?"

"No luggage," Riku sighs.

"Right this way," Axel leads, the group heading to an old-fashioned elevator. As if timing for just this occasion, the building lights up in a dazzling display of dying lightbulbs. One can see this same Gothic architecture within, with lots of velvet and ash-tinted statues engraved right into the walls. Kind of a gloomy atmosphere, with these statues depicting people in writhing despair. More befitting an opera house than a hotel, but whatever. With a press of the button, the elevator gives a loud ding as it slides open. The group dutifully files in, the doors shutting with another press of the button.

"Still won't tell m-" Axel attempts, the elevator lurching upwards at an agonizingly slow pace.

"No," Riku cuts off.

"Alrighty, then," Axel says, his expression going blank once again. Only takes a few seconds more for another loud ding and the opening of the doors. This hallway casts quite a few odd shadows, with only about half of the old fashioned lamp-post style lanterns jutting from the walls still working. A lack of windows and overabundance of operatic iconography gives off this sense of foreboding; as though this is not a place meant for humans to live. Still, Axel and Riku don't seem to mind as they walk right in, so all Emily can really do is follow.

It doesn't take too long to get to a door marked '309' in gigantic numbers. Axel stuffs an old fashioned key in and opens it up to a completely pitch-black room. A heavy flick of a switch reveals a pretty comfy suite of huge proportions, with a living room sporting a couch, piano, and book shelf as the first visible room within.

"Your room, madam," Axel says in a joking imitation of a bellhop, "Before I go; what are your measurements?"

"Huh?" Emily asks.

"So I can buy you some new clothes," Axel clarifies, "Well, not 'buy'... you know what I mean."

"Oh..." Emily stalls, glancing to Riku's approving nod before continuing, "It's been so long, I kind of forgot... I think 43, 36, 41? I don't know... I usually just buy Large Tall."

"I'll figure something out," Axel says, "I'll just bring a big pile of clothes. Anyway, feel free to settle right on in. I'd avoid the minibar if I were you; not because it's ten munny for a stale candy bar, but because it's been over a year since it got changed. Shampoo and soap should be okay. I need to take your most-definitely-not-boyfriend upstairs. Be back in an hour!"

Riku gives an audible, irritated sigh as he turns back to the elevator. Axel makes that same 'I see you' gesture once again before turning around and heading back to Riku's side. Without any hesitation, Emily practically tears her outfit off as she makes a dash for the bathroom. She could care less about the jade-covered walls and ornate mirror; there's a functional toilet and she fully intends to use it. Best feeling ever. Takes a second for the toilet to flush properly, a gush of filthy brown air coming through before the water. Whatever. Same thing happens with both the sink and shower, but who cares? It's decently clean water and nothing compares to a really long shower after spending nearly twenty hours in a space ship.

* * *

.

* * *

Thoroughly clean to every last pore, Emily can't help but admire herself in the mirror. Even with her fractured wrist, there are still no scars and her hair is still something just short of perfect. She's still kind of miffed about her so-called 'banana' body shape and musculature popping past the fat, but what can she really do about it? Riku is insistent she maintain her combat fitness and if that means looking less feminine, so be it. Maybe someday when there's peace in her time, she can sculpt down to a better look.

A knock on the door breaks her concentration. Has it really been an hour?

"I'm back!" Axel calls through the door. Emily grabs a pair of the criminally small towels and wraps them around her chest and waist. With the vital areas covered, she answers the door to find Axel leaning his back on a luggage cart filled with clothes in a haphazard pile. Kind of bugs her to see so many nice outfits just tossed on without any care, but whatever.

"Thank you," Emily says, waiting for Axel to move away.

"Nice four-pack," Axel comments with a wayward stare, his voice taking on a creepy monotone, "Must look great when you're pumped."

"Wha...?" Emily says, confused. A glance over her form reveals just as Axel says: the barest outline of a two by two grid in her abdominal muscles. Now that's something she never really paid attention to... well, it just goes with the rest of her.

"I know what you're up to," Axel says, monotone, "You... or, rather, Riku claims you're a colonist, but your figure, stance, and carry all scream military. You're toned for flexibility, speed, and precision, but strong enough to carry a full equipment load. Your lack of concern for your measurements and surprise at your own figure suggest you're not actually going for appearance. This is purely functional figure, functional musculature, and all of it suggests deep infiltration and assassination. You're a spy."

"...how did you know?" Emily plays along.

"Except there's more," Axel continues, "Riku must have put you up to this and thinks I'll believe you to be a spy against him. Probably thinks I'm looking for blackmail material and wants to protect you. In truth, because you're so clueless about everything, I kind of figured that out. I took the liberty of scanning you and hacking the UCoP database. You know, they made the darnedest mistake on your name. I would find it hilarious if I still had real emotions."

"They had something besides Marle?" Emily responds, really hoping he's not going where she thinks he is.

"They listed Kei-Kou," Axel continues, mispronouncing her fake name, "One of Riku's notes listed an immigration assigned last name of 'Fluffypants'; as if I needed any more obvious clues. Neither that nor Marle are your real names, however. Scanner showed you as 'Emily Tennenbaum': a name that shows up nowhere in your file. I have no clue what's up with that and frankly, my dear, I don't care. All I know is lying about your name for five months is probably a big enough offense to warrant a court martial and bury your reputation; after all, what else might you be lying about? I can prove it through science and they can confirm it through a telepath. Hence, blackmail material."

"...what do you want?" Emily asks, defeated and annoyed.

"Oh, nothing much," Axel says, his voice drifting back into emotion, "After the tour, I'm gonna ask you a favor. Pretend to be reluctant and let me convince you to accept. Don't worry; it's nothing tasteless. In fact, you should be _proud_ of what I'm gonna ask of you. I'd tell you about it now, but I can't risk your bad acting giving it away. Got it memorized?"

"...yeah..." Emily says, looking down in shame. Yet another failure for the pile.

"Buck up, kiddo," Axel says, smacking Emily's shoulder. The flimsy towel comes right off, her reflexes crossing her arms just in time to save her modesty. Figures her humiliation wouldn't end with just this conversation. Axel doesn't even blink at this as he reaches into his lab coat and pulls out some type of white plastic medical bracelet thing.

"Here's something for your wrist," Axel says in monotone, Emily carefully reaching out and grabbing it without lowering her arms, "Xion can cast a spell in about an hour once your bones settle."

"Thank you," Emily responds.

"Well, _anyway_," Axel says, all smiles and cheers, "I'm gonna go pick up Riku and together, we're gonna go to a feast! Xion is one _hell_ of a cook. Be back in a jiffy!"

With that, Axel skips off towards the elevator. Emily just stands there in this awkward position, waiting for the elevator doors to close in front of Axel as he gives a half-assed salute. With that out of the way, she grabs the luggage cart with her good arm and drags it inside. Well, doesn't this beat all? Axel really is kind of a manipulative dick, but she's still not convinced he's actively malicious. She has no clue what he might ask of her and the way he was talking, it might even be something she'd agree to on her own. She'll just have to press on.

After fitting her injured wrist into the brace, Emily starts digging through the pile for some proper undergarments. Axel apparently didn't think this pile through because all that stuff is under all the other clothes. Well, at least he remembered. All of it is kind of old fashioned, with broad satin knickers and the bras built into thin, lacey undershirts. It will have to do. Luckily, there are some decent T-shirts and pants in this pile. Finishing off with a pair of sandals two sizes too big, she's all set and ready to go. Just in time, for there's that knock at the door. She opens it to reveal Riku in a similarly generic outfit of a white shirt and blue jeans, Axel nearby.

"Looking good, Marle," Axel comments, giving a thumbs up, "Ready?"

"Yeah," Emily responds, following the group as they start down the hallway. Riku certainly doesn't look to be in the best of moods; in fact, he seems like he wishes to be somewhere else. Did Axel do the blackmail game on him as well?

"Come on, Riku," Axel says in a prying manner, the elevator doors closing, "Talk to me!"

"About what?" Riku retorts.

"About the disaster that brought you here," Axel prods.

"Classified information," Riku dismisses once again. Axel starts to say something, but apparently decides against it before he makes a sound and shifts his face back to that dead look. With another elevator ding, the doors open to that creepy lobby. The group continues through and enters a gigantic ballroom with a massive oak table. While there's a decent variety of stuff, it's kind of thin on the servings. There's only really enough for one or maybe two people per dish, but at least there are about twenty different things. Xion is already seated, hunched forward and very lightly nibbling on some green thing.

"Help yourselves," Axel states, taking a seat and slouching backwards without grabbing any food. Riku grabs pretty much all of the meat and a glass of some white stuff, taking the furthest seat away from Axel as possible. All Emily can really do is just take whatever isn't green and accept that it's not exactly a meal befitting royalty. Because she's going to have to talk with Xion eventually to get her wrist fixed, she decides to sit next to her. Without a word for the time being, she starts on her salty carrots soaked in brown sauce. Yum.

"So, Xion," Axel starts, voice dead, "Did the simulation find a better amino acid yet?"

"Not yet," Xion responds, also monotonous, "Only usable one is still the current hybrid of whey and yolk proteins; just like we've been using all these years."

"Interesting it's common milk and eggs instead of a designer strand," Axel continues, "But we need something new. Yeo are lactose intolerant and if they can't buy it, our plans won't get anywhere. What about beef?"

"No conductivity," Xion responds, "Already checked the other proteins they eat. Nothing."

"Hmm..." Axel ponders, "This might explain why there aren't any Yeo mages. I've always believed we stopped research on the biology of magic after finding one sustainable model that exceeds human capacity, but if this really is the one key to magic and we throw out all other possibilities, maybe we could find a way to overcome Yeo allergies?"

"There are Yeo psychics," Xion counters.

"But not mages," Axel retorts, "Two completely different things. As much as I'd like to try to harness psychic energy, it simply doesn't produce the output necessary..."

"Hey, Marle," Riku softly calls out. Emily stares ahead blankly for a few seconds before remembering her pseudonym, turning to find Riku motioning her over. She picks up her empty dish and grabs a serving of some random thing as she reseats next to Riku.

"Yes?" Emily asks, Riku making some patting motion towards the table. What could it be?

"You didn't ask Axel for that brace, did y-" Riku attempts in a low voice.

"Yo, guys!" Axel calls out, imitating some mixture of playfulness and disappointment, "Secrets are no fun! Let's all talk!"

"...nevermind," Riku softly says, staring into his dish.

"Well, anyway," Axel continues, his voice going back, "Now that Mickey's out for lunch, I think we're going to have to start cultivating all our own Yeo cells. Can't just use the reserve willy nilly any more."

"That could take weeks," Xion starts, "We don't have what we need to build a Yeo egg. We'd have to break down the female cells and simulate the lifetime of a Yeo woman to maturation, ovulation, and impregnation."

"I wish I hadn't put off asking for more general textbooks on Yeo anatomy," Axel would sigh if his voice carried any emotion, "All these books, essays, and journals on Yeo muscular development and immunology, but not even a high school book on where baby Yeo come from. Aren't we missing the forest for the trees?"

"I don't think a GCSE book would have any chemical formulas," Xion retorts.

"You know what I mean," Axel counters.

"So, um, Marle," Riku whispers just barely to be heard by Emily, his lips not really moving, "What did Axe-"

"Hey!" Axel interrupts again, "If you don't like our topic, propose a new one. We're open-minded."

"...how about those Radiant Raiders?" Riku asks, not exactly hiding his intent of shorting the conversation.

"Riku, my man," Axel says, his voice suddenly jubilant, "I'm fond of you and everything, but you know I don't get any reception out here. I would have the cable company come over, but last time I called, they said four lightyears of wire for a single customer wasn't worth it. Why you asking to talk about sports?"

"I don't know," Riku shrugs. As Axel turns his attention back to Xion, Riku subtly points to Emily and then her old seat. Well, if he wants it, why not?

"Think maybe we could fix the other server cluster?" Axel asks, voice dead again, "I'd hate to stop the amino analysis."

"Fix it with what?" Xion asks.

"Sora's ship is pretty high grade," Axel offers, "Maybe we could jury-rig something with its motherboard bus?"

"You've got a point," Xion admits.

"Yo! Riku!" Axel calls out, his voice back in high spirits, "I'm gonna tear apart your ship's computer for parts. You okay with that?"

Riku gives this rather dour stare without moving his head back up. Kind of a 'dude, not funny' look. Axel's gaze meets Riku's, but rather than threat, he seems to find humor.

"It's not exactly going anywhere, is it?" Axel says with a chuckle.

"Do what you want," Riku grunts, staring back at his plate again.

"All right!" Axel rejoices with a victorious downwards pump.

"Want me to go get it now?" Xion offers.

"After the tour," Axel says, turning to face Riku, "Yo, sourpuss, you done yet?"

"Sure," Riku says, shoving the plate away. As much as Emily hates to look like a scavenger, she really needs some kind of meat in her. She reaches over and grabs the plate, starting on the chicken.

"I guess Gnarly Marle really needed that meat you hoarded," Axel chides, "Didn't your mother ever teach you to share?"

"My mother died when I was five years old," Riku states, not even looking up. Axel kind of bites a little into his lip as he squints at Riku.

"...awk-warrrrd," Axel says, blowing from the side of his mouth as he turns back to Xion, "Think you can get the four passenger?"

"Sure thing," Xion says, rising out of her seat and walking past Emily around the table. As she passes by, her black back thing pats Emily on her face. Kind of soft and smooth; almost like silk. What the hell is this thing, anyway?

"Come on, Riku, open up," Axel prods, "You can't still be bitter about the past. I've reformed! I've changed my ways! I'm welcoming you into my humble abode with open arms, a president's suite, and a feast! How can you be so cold?"

"No matter what you say or what you do," Riku counters, glancing up, "You will always be _that_ guy. You might have Mickey fooled or something, but I will always remember."

"Just think about it, Riku..." Axel trails off, the sound of a distant motor vehicle echoing through the halls, "Well, there's our ride. Gnarly Marle, you can take the plate along."

"Huh?" Emily asks, realizing she's still absent-mindedly snacking on this meat, "...I'm done."

"Our chariot awaits," Axel says with a grandiose wave, rising out of his seat. Emily and Riku follow suit, going through the gloomy lobby and out the main door to find a four person golf cart. Hardly a 'chariot', but is it really worth complaining? Axel takes the rear seat behind Xion and Riku takes the front seat, leaving Emily to sit next to the kind of creepy red-head.

"Lab B?" Xion asks.

"Nah... let's go to the armory first," Axel requests.

With that, Xion starts driving the cart deeper into the city. Just like in the game series, Twilight Town proves to be kind of a rustic San Francisco of downhill slopes, the paths spiraling impractically. Was there no real city planning committee or did it honestly believe this to be a good model? Not like anything's going to be done to fix this; why should Axel really care how it looks?

"So, Riku, how's the keyblade working out?" Axel asks.

"Classified information," Riku dismisses.

"Oh, _come on_," Axel pries, "Not _everything_ is classified."

"You're right," Riku says, "I'll rephrase: I don't want to talk about it."

"See, that's better," Axel says, "You don't have to lie to me."

"Glad you agree," Riku mutters.

"Why don't you want to talk about it?" Axel prods.

"Because _shut up_," Riku retorts. Axel casts a quizzical glance over his shoulder at Riku before shifting back to the dead-eyed look. The rest of the trip passes in silence, the mood rather dour. As much as Emily doesn't want to admit it, Riku is kind of being a dick about all this. Sure, she doesn't know what happened between them, but it seems like this would go a lot better if Riku would just play along.

The group eventually comes to a stop in front of a single-floor white building complex. The architecture conflicts greatly with the rest of the city, with a utilitarian purpose driving its design. Everything about it looks surprisingly advanced in its simplicity: window panes glow with some green energy, vents emit visible waves of hot air, and the contours all point towards some grander function. Did Axel have this built or something?

"Here we are," Axel says, hopping off. Everybody follows him as he swings the metallic doors open, revealing a highly advanced hallway of white and grey circuitry. Inexplicable machines litter the walls, their function unknown but appearance magnificent. Everything seems to tie into everything else, with only a set of objects framed on the walls breaking up this technological flow and even these things seem to go by the same design philosophy. Everything seems to incorporate a four point logo of sharp curves, with three spear points and what appears to be the top half of a heart; none other than the Organization XIII logo.

"Wait... is that...?" Riku mutters, baffled.

"Yep," Axel says with a smug smile, "Exactly."

"But... _how_ did you get all these?" Riku asks, squinting at the weapons.

"You think so three-dimensionally," Axel mocks, walking up to a pair of chalk-white over flat grey claw-gloves on a frame marked 'XII', "Larxene, originally Arlene, member twelve. Formerly acquisitions management at Xemnas Corp, she used to be a savvy and perceptive businesswoman before the incident. After that, she kind of lost her subtlety along with her emotions and started wailing on people as her pre-incident imitation. You remember her, don't you, Riku?"

"Yes..." Riku grudgingly admits, glancing away suspiciously. Axel leads the group across to the other wall to a display of a scythe. Kind of a weird thing, with two spear points opposite where the blade and handle meet. Also chalk white and flat grey, with the frame showing 'XI'.

"Marluxia," Axel continues, "Formerly Lumaria, number eleven, marketing division. I don't like to think about her because transvestites kind of give me the creeps, but she became way worse about her 'I'm a man trapped in a woman's body' shtick after the incident. She came up with the idea of removing Xehanort, but she was _way_ too aggressive about it and I had to get Sora to put her down."

"Marluxia was a girl?" Riku asks, confused, "You know... that explains a _lot_."

"I know!" Axel says, all smiles again. As the group moves a couple meters over to the next frame, Emily takes the opportunity to get behind Xion. She's going to figure out what this thing on her back is even if it means abusing her lessons in silent movement. The next weapon in the line up appears to be a double-sized deck of playing cards. Standard Organization XIII label and color scheme on the box and the ones sticking slightly out in a staircase arrangement, with the frame numbered 'X'.

"Luxord," Axel narrates, "Formerly Dolur, number ten. First scientist on our tour... if barely. It's not to say I don't think statisticians aren't important and he did do an incredible job of crunching numbers, but statistics are just the framework for science rather than real science. After the incident, he became so obsessed with game theory. Couldn't finish a sentence without mentioning terms like 'equilibrium', 'mixed strategy', or the old 'Prisoner's Dilemma'. I think nobody wanted to hang out with him not long before the end."

"What happened to him?" Riku asks, "I thought I saw him during the final assault, but none of my team came across him."

"I cornered him on his way through the Corridors and... shall we say... made him an offer he couldn't refuse..." Axel says, his voice monotonous, "...he refused. You'd think someone that spent his life reading and writing about game theory as a passion would have made a smarter move..."

"Oh, please, tell me more," Riku pries, vindictive, "Or is it 'classified'?"

As Axel half-mutters his explanation to Riku, Emily moves in a little closer to Xion for some inspection. Crouching down and looking up from underneath reveals this whole thing to be lifted about five centimeters away from her completely bare back. The structure is connected to her down either side of her spine in a kind of gross, veiny way; as though it was grafted right into her circulatory system rather than merely stitched on. Well, that answers what's keeping it there, but still not what it's for. Perhaps a side view will better reveal this puzzle?

"...want to touch?" Xion offers.

"...huh?" Emily responds, confused. With a sudden movement that catches her off-guard, the two black structures bend back into diagonals and extend upwards in a magnificent display of black plumage spanning a good five meters. Emily suddenly realizes what these are in spite of everything in her brain trying to reason against it: wings. What the hell? Is Xion some kind of mutant or did she actually have these things surgically grafted onto her? What kind of person allows such a risky operation in the first place? It's not like she doesn't already have a keyblade all her own as a source of power...

"You've staring a hole into my back since we got here," Xion clarifies, fast-twitching one of the wings to lightly puff Emily in her face, "Go ahead: touch them."

"...okay..." Emily says, reluctant. She slowly reaches her good arm up and very gently rests her hand upon a wing. It initially twitches away as though involuntary, but loosens up and softly rises with a contour suited for her hand; seems like it's almost inviting her in. Emily lightly strokes with her fingers to get a better tactile feel of this affront against nature. It really feels kind of weird; these aren't really feathers so much as they're segments of silk-like organic rags attached to the main mass by thick but pliable fibers. She tries to lightly burrow deeper in, but it seems kind of tangled. Maybe she can try the other side?

"Ooh, yeah, that's the stuff..." Xion purrs, creeping Emily out just a bit more. Axel slowly turns to face the two, Riku not far behind.

"Get a room, you two," Axel says in tone of mock disapproval. Emily immediately retracts her hands with those words; she certainly had no clue it would possess that kind of stigma. Now she feels kind of dirty. Xion folds and retracts her wings back to that neutral position as Axel leads the group to frame number 'IX', apparently eager to move right along. Appears to be some kind of long-necked guitar in the shape of the Organization logo. Still chalk white and flat grey, but there is some kind of yellow machine attached where the pickups should be.

"Now this one's _fun_," Axel says, picking up the weird stringed instrument by its neck. After slipping the strap over his shoulder, he jolts his hand in the air and starts a set of forceful strums. Out of nowhere, not only does the instrument play some hard-driven guitar riffs, but the rest of the rock band to go with it. Axel starts singing along in a voice surprisingly unlike his own, making wild gestures with his face to go along.

_Whoooah, we're half-way theerrree!  
Whoooaa-OHHHHH, living on a prayerrr-ERR!  
Take my hand, we'll make it, I sweeaa-eaar!  
Whoooaa-OHHHHH, living on a prayerrr-ERR!_

Just as suddenly as he burst into this song, he stops with everything cutting right off. Emily and Riku stare in dumbstruck silence at this display, audibly blinking.

"...what the..." Emily mutters. Axel fakes a laugh at this reception, unstrapping the instrument and holding it high in the air.

"That... is the power of rock," Axel declares, suddenly tossing the guitar in Emily's reflexive arms, "Go ahead, try it!"

"Wait, what?" Emily asks, unsure what he could be talking about. She still straps the thing over her shoulder, but she's only had maybe one half-hearted guitar lesson from a relative and she can't even remember how the three basic chords are supposed to work. Is it this finger here and this thumb there, or...

"Just think of a song and play..." Axel instructs, giving a thoughtful expression, "...actually, think of the absolute most _obscure_ thing you can think of. Something just _barely_ on the corner of your mind. Maybe it's an idea or a riff or a mood. As far away in your memory you can get."

"Okay..." Emily responds, thinking about some bit of song that has teased her mind as of late. Something haunting and obscure. If only she could remember it...

Without any input of her own, her arms move on their own to lightly pluck some single notes. This kind of weak, mournful, heavily distorted guitar sound issues forth, barely audible and quickly fading. Before it gets a chance to finish its descent, her left hand forms a complex chord and right arm starts strumming methodically. This jangly acoustic sound issues from the instrument, kind of going high-low-low-pause-high-low-low-pause-high-high. Finishing the measure with two interlinked repeats of three haunting, resonate chords, she repeats the whole measure as the rest of the band starts issuing forth from the instrument. Kind of a slow-tempo, bassy song, with what almost sounds like a conga and shaker focused percussion set. After a few repeating measures, her mouth moves on its own and a dreamy voice similar in pitch but masculine in harmonics issues forth.

_Awake on my airplane, awake on my airplane,__  
My skin is bare, my skin is their's.  
Awake on my airplane, awake on my airplane,  
My skin is bare, my skin is their's._

_IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII... feel like a newbooooorrn..._

"That's hot," Axel comments during Emily's refrain, apparently ignoring her confused face. Riku just stares in total bafflement at this display. Emily doesn't get very long before losing control again.

_And IIIIIIIIIII... feel like a new-booorrrrrrrrrrrrrrnnnnn..._

_Awake on my airplane, awake on my airplane,  
IIIIIII... ~Feel~. ~So~. ~Neeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww~..._

Emily's face shifts into surprise at the really high pitched voice she just made. What does her mom call that style again? Falsetto? Before she gets much of a chance to ponder on music terminology, her left hands stops shifting as it settles upon one simple chord. That possessed voice cuts right back in with this simplification of performance, bending and shifting in bizarre ways.

_Cuz you wanna take my pictuurrre  
Cuz IIIII wooon't rememberrrr  
Cuz you wanna take my pictuurrre  
Cuz IIIII wooon't rememberrrr  
Cuz you wanna take my pictuurrre  
Cuz IIIII wooon't rememberrrr  
Cuz you wanna take my pictuurrre  
Cuz IIIII wooon't rememberrrr... yeah._

Emily starts giving this frightened expression as her strumming lightens and left hand resumes shifting. Some kind of hard driven sound similar to that opening.

"Just stop playing," Axel suggests, apparently picking up on Emily's distress. While it initially seems like a useless suggestion, the mere thought of it suddenly cuts the song off and frees her hands. Without wasting even a second, Emily flips the instrument off and tosses it away with all her might. Axel just barely dives in and catches it before it hits the ground.

"What the freaking hell?" Emily exclaims in abject horror, backing away frightened as she stares at her hands, "That thing _possessed_ me!"

"Only Demyx could be lazy enough to invent an instrument plays itself _through_ you," Axel chuckles, "What song was that?"

"...'Take a Picture' by Filter from their 1999 album _Title of Record_..." Emily absent-mindedly recites, a question immediately springing to mind, "Why do I even _know_ that? I've never heard of that band before..."

"Every good song that gets in your brain has a unique signature," Axel explains, "So it's as I suspect: that instrument seems to tap that psychic network and relays it through the player. Thank you; you've helped me _so_ much."

"Can we just move past this part of the tour?" Riku asks.

"No," Axel sternly responds, "Demyx, formerly Dyme, number nine. Acoustics, wave spectrum, radio frequency, electric signals. He used to slack around a lot and just knock off all his work ten minutes before the deadline, but after the incident, he stopped the work part. Really a shame: if you simply did a ratio of brilliant ideas to time spent working, he was probably ten times smarter than the rest of us combined. Really nice guy, great to be around..."

"...I told you before, Sora did _not_ know," Riku explains in righteous indignation, apparently picking up on something unsaid, "Demyx also attacked first and _hard_. Sora is _not_ at fault for what happened; it was freakin' _self defense_..."

"Whatever helps him sleep at night..." Axel dismisses in a moody tone, leading the group to the next part of the exhibit... a frame marked VIII. No weapon in sight. Axel hesitates as he looks at the empty frame, but Riku seems to know exactly what it is.

"Go ahead," Riku taunts, "Narrate it."

"Axel, former name..." Axel says, looking around in what appears to be embarrassment, "...Lea, number eight. Biology, biochemistry, bioengineering, biomechanics, genetics, bio-magic synergy, pharmacology, the works; if it lives and breathes, I can work with it. Coming here, I've had to learn some more general physics, advanced calculus, and computer programming now that Luxord is no longer around to process all the raw numbers. So... yeah. Moving on."

Riku just shrugs as Axel leads the group to a frame marked 'VII'. Hanging precipitously off the flimsy hooks is an absolutely gigantic sword. Its hilt gives the impression of clockwork, with that same aspect going into the surprisingly thick blade that ends with a four-point set of spikes within a seven point spiked wheel. It probably doesn't even really qualify as a sword given that the sides are way too broad to cut anything; perhaps it's really a club? Same color scheme as all the others.

"Saïx," Axel narrates, "Formerly Isa, number seven. Metallurgy, structural physics, lots of engineering. He's the one that came up with the ultimate-ceramic and nanomachine-maintained steel you see everywhere. As probably our most important engineer, he tied almost everything together into the machines we sold; most of what you see around us came from him. He wa-"

"That's fascinating..." Riku interrupts, "Why are you showing us all this? You're just wasting all our time."

"Showing the possibilities of the process," Axel responds.

"What process?" Riku asks, "At what point did it look like we cared about a 'process'?"

"Somewhere between 35 and 40 thousand years ago," Axel explains, Riku rolling his eyes impatiently, "There was an ancient civilization. Their name and most of their culture has long since been lost over the ages, but one of their manuals came into our possession. As the height of their power, they had perfected the art of weapons engineering. They created weapons with a perfect magic synergy that can only be used by its wielder and worked by teleporting in and out of existence. Imbued with a natural intelligence and possessing such incredible power as to require 'limiters' on all who wield them, they were called 'Intelligent Devices'."

"So you guys didn't even invent your own weapons?" Riku mocks.

"Oh, we invented them all right..." Axel continues, "The book was missing many of its pages and we had to rebuild much of our knowledge. It helps that we had a reference model; a set of Intelligent Devices that pass themselves from wielder to wielder, influencing great events and protecting the universe from the threats stemming from the Realms of both Darkness and Light."

"Wait a second..." Riku responds, staring at Axel suspiciously, "You're not saying..."

"The keyblade, Riku," Axel lays out, "The keyblades are nothing more than a set of Intelligent Devices that find new wielders and compel them to eradicate those who would upset the balance. They are magical, yes, but there is nothing orphic, divine, or sacrosanct about them; they are machines, pure and simple."

"But... that's..." Riku says, his face trying to reason with this revelation. Something about it seems to really bother the crap out of him.

"Xehanort gave every scientist he recruited a speech," Axel continues, "'Nothing's Mythical'... trademark. 'Everything has an origin and everything can be explained by a scientific model. Magic is a pervasive energy source based around a set of naturally occurring dimensional wells, Heartless are cohesive masses of mercury and silicon driven by a collective intelligence, and Kingdom Hearts is a massive, malfunctioning Intelligent Device created by the precursors to regulate and distribute magic across the universe. The moment you cast off understanding of reality in favor of unknowable, omnipotent deities, you are no longer a scientist and you will not be welcome amongst our ranks. So I ask of you: is it divine... or is it science?'"

"Can we just go home already?" Riku asks impatiently, "We've humored you long enough on your lonely rant, but we just need a roof over our heads and food on our tables. We don't need to listen to all this and we definitely don't care about your mad science."

"I rebuilt the machines Zexion designed for imbuing Intelligent Devices and would like to test his hypothesis of the Evolving Arsenal, but there's a small problem," Axel continues, completely ignoring Riku's request, "After a person is imbued with an Intelligent Device, it cannot be removed from them. It can be suppressed through special machinery, but it cannot be removed outright. Since a person cannot have more than one Intelligent Device bound to them at a time, that made it impossible to test... until now."

Emily picks up on where this is going and doesn't like the sound of it. Axel seems to notice her perception and walks right over, gently lifting her hands.

"Marle," Axel continues, his face sincere, "Will you-"

"_Leave her alone_," Riku commands forcefully. Axel gently lowers Emily's hands and turns to face Riku.

"Is she your _slave_ or something?" Axel asks, imitating irritation.

"Marle is a colonist bumpkin," Riku lies convincingly, if insultingly, "She has no clue what you're getting her into and I won't let you trick her into something like this."

"Oh, _please_," Axel retorts, "This is the same thing all us Organization XIII inner circle members did to ourselves and look how well-adjusted we turned out... okay, nevermind that: look how _powerful_ we all turned out. If you remember, I kicked Sora's _ass_ at Castle Oblivion after all the other members were put down."

"Say no, Marle," Riku urges, "Remember Pendrick."

"Oh, now you're quoting Dr. Moreau," Axel chastises, "Fine: have it your way. I wasn't going to touch her until after I designed some perfected weaponry over the next few months and evaluated her magic core, but since you can't let Marle make her own decisions, she can wait until we're ready to use the machine... which makes no difference, anyway. God _damn_, Riku."

Axel turns back to Emily, making that same 'I see you' gesture once again. Emily can't help but wonder if this was the favor he wanted; it was a pretty big request, but she didn't even get a chance to protest it. He said to pretend to oppose it and let him convince her otherwise, but Riku stopped that from happening. She'll just have to keep prepared for another possible request.

"Let's skip all this," Axel sighs with a dismissive hand gesture, leading the group past the remaining frames. Kind of a shame since Emily really wanted to hear about Xehanort himself, but what can she really do?

The group heads through a set of double doors to reveal a massive laboratory. Everything has that chalk white and flat grey look as before, but with no attention paid to appearance over function. While Emily would expect nothing but highly advanced technology, it doesn't really seem too radically different from any other real-life lab she's seen. Some tables have extensive sets of test tubes carrying clear liquids and hastily scrawled tags, some have advanced analysis and mixing machines, and others have piles of notebooks alongside flatbed computers. Nothing seems too out of the ordinary...

...that is, until she locates the real technological marvel: the stasis tubes. Kept to the outer walls as far away from the chemistry are these computerized machines with glass tubes several meters wide. Half of them contain a vaguely peach tinted fluid and a huge variety of half-folded wings in various states of composition. Some are white, some black, some in between. While wings based on both bird feathers and bat membrane exist near the start of either wall, both variants gradually morph into the silky type currently on Xion's back. So that's where they come from...

"And now, the crown jewel of my research," Axel declares, arms outstretched to the breadth of his domain, "Project _Lunctum per Pennae_. A set of biologically intertwined, hereditary, genetically variable wings that can be vat-grown to order and grafted onto humans and, hopefully, Yeo. Dual magic cores at the buds of each wing generate miniature whirlwinds to provide loft and thermal vents for easy hovering. Loft scales with the intensity of each flap; only those with good muscle mass, low body weight, and developed cardiovascular fitness will be able to fly for extended periods of time. While it would be easy enough to make it effortless, that would undermine their purpose: reverse the trends towards laziness and obesity in favor of fitness and evolution."

"Of course," Axel continues, leading the group a good three hundred meters up to a half-finished set of wings in a tube, "This will probably mean the eventual extinction of endomorphs and ectomorphs amongst humans. It will be a long time coming and many cultures will reject the wings altogether as 'sacrilege' or whatever, but as humans grow more attached to flight and attracted to those who possess an idealized angelic appearance, the mesomorphs will be the ones to thrive and it's just as well they should. Then again... will the winged humans still, technically, be human... or something much greater? Which is not to say they will be a different species: winged humans will still be inter-fertile with non-winged, but any child of that union will gain the extra chromosomes and the wings they code."

"That's lovely," Riku dismisses, "Real practical. There's a _reason_ jetpacks and rocket boots aren't legal on most worlds."

"But my dear Riku," Axel starts, "These aren't bulky, expensive, fuel gobbling, exhaust spewing, fire starting, inherently unsafe rockets: these are _wings_. They draw from an effectively-infinite power source, built-in muscle memory will prevent accidents not borne of recklessness, and once I finish my latest revisions, they can collapse almost entirely into one's back. Surely, you can appreciate the difference."

"Who's going to buy this?" Riku asks, "For people to buy this, their government will have to legalize personal flight. For them to take a chance on legalizing this, there will have to be a lot of people that want to buy it. Even then, who but the freaks are going to let themselves be subjected to this kind of surgery? You'd need an entire culture to adopt it, rich and poor, for it to work. How are you going to pull _that_ off?"

"The Yeo," Axel answers, "They have racial memories of flying and long for a day when they can take to the skies once more. They have their own researchers working around the clock to try and create a set of biologically viable wings. Their government very sincerely promises that once they have the solution to 'become whole again', not a single person will be denied their 'divine right'. That's twenty four _billion_ people, Riku, and I can charge as much as I want; I'm going to aim for twenty times cost. After their society proves to live in harmony as a result of my augmentation and I'm rich beyond even the old Xemnas Corporation, I will start offering the process for free on the condition that not a person be denied for socio-economic reasons."

"...believe what you want," Riku dismisses, "I don't care."

"With my current schedule," Axel starts, not paying any mind to Riku's statement, "I think I can roll out the human version within the next four months. Once I work out the details of the blood-puffing, I'll have a set that can fold in between shoulder width and compact to a space less than fifteen centimeters off the back. Folded wings will flex naturally with normal back movements with only limited loss of mobility; extending them even partially outwards will completely remove that limitation. Even if flight at aircraft altitude is disallowed, people can still get wings and enjoy flight just above ground level. It would remove the need for cars as light-load personal transportation, for one."

"I don't care," Riku repeats.

"I need another test subject," Axel continues, Riku's interest picking up, "Xion here has been a _beautiful_ test subject, but we found her Intelligent Device interacts with the buds. Seems her keyblade recognizes the cores and can supply power to them for entirely effortless flight and some very... interesting spell possibilities. This will only further sell my invention; combined with my forthcoming Arsenal-series Intelligent Device, angels of death will rain holy fire upon the battlefield and I know exactly who will be my very first chosen warrior."

"No, Axel," Riku sternly states. Axel just ignores him as he walks up to Emily and lifts her hands just like before.

"Marle," Axel starts, "Will you be my angel of death?"

"Say no, Marle," Riku urges. Axel lets off a huge sigh as he drops Emily's hands and turns to Riku.

"Riku, Riku, Riku," Axel starts, his voice quite audibly past the breaking point of his patience, "Buddy, pal, dearest of all my friends; _shut up_ and let her make her own decisions. Thank you."

"Wings feel _incredible_, Marle," Xion chimes in, surprising Emily just a little, "You never realize how much your body _yearns_ for them until you wake up on the table and extend them for the first time. It's like your body has always been feeling for them and all of the sudden, there they are."

"Axel spent twenty years with Xehanort killing people by the bil-" Riku attempts.

"**I did not condone his actions!**" Axel cuts in, finally losing his cool, "God _damn_, Riku: how many times do I have to _tell_ you? Next to _none_ of us knew he was doing those experiments until _after_ the incident. I started planning his downfall the very _day_ he reorganized us as a black cloak cult and ordered mass genocide for his _cockamamie_ plan to duplicate Kingdom Hearts."

"He's lying, Marle," Riku presses.

"Oh, sure," Axel continues, "You know more about what happened amongst us than a twenty five year employee like myself. Why are you doing this to me, Riku? I went through all that trouble to track you down and recruit you even after your corruption. DiZ didn't even _want_ to touch you with your history, but I talked him into it. _I saved your freaking life!_"

"You just needed some dumb muscle who had nowhere else to go," Riku retorts.

"Well, yes, that's also true," Axel responds, "But you make it sound like there aren't a hundred would-be apprentices of Maleficent floating around."

"Don't listen to him, Marle," Riku urges. Axel sighs and holds his hand outwards towards Riku as he turns back to Emily.

"Marle," Axel starts, "Riku is not your master. You are free to choose whether or not you'll partake in my program. He is talking out of unfounded jealousy and spite; he told you to not ask for any help with your broken wrist, didn't he?"

Riku starts to say something, but apparently decides against it. Axel glances over for just a second, giving a smirk as he catches a glimpse of Riku's face.

"See?" Axel continues, his voice triumphant, "Riku would rather your bones heal improperly and have to spend years fixing the damage than allow me to look even just a little bit better in your eyes. He does not care about your well-being so much as he cares about opposing me no matter what. Don't trust him and make the decision on your own. I ask again: would you like to be a trailblazer of science and hold history's place as the person that made a universal revolution possible?"

"...I don't know," Emily says, looking down at her feet as she forces these next words out of her mouth, "...maybe?"

"Excellent," Axel says, pricking Emily in the side with a syringe as he walks towards a vat.

"Ow!" Emily involuntarily reacts, distress starting to form as a thousand thoughts overwhelm her mind, "I didn't say _right now!_ I needed time to prepare!"

"Oh, please," Axel responds coldly, "Have you not been paying attention? Wings aren't going to just sprout out of your back in some magical defiance of conservation of mass; I needed a blood sample so I can genetically code your chromosomes 24-30 and grow your own pair... wait a second..."

Axel stares a bit closer at the blood-filled syringe, something catching his eye. What could he possibly see in these couple milliliters of blood? Just looks red and thick even as he swishes it back and forth. All of the sudden, he practically pounces on Emily as he grabs her head by the jaw with one hand and runs his fingers through her hair with the other.

"What the hell?" Emily almost-shrieks, his dead stare into her eyes somehow way creepier than Riku's wild eyes.

"As I live and breath... the tint!" Axel exclaims, bringing his head within mere centimeters of Emily's, "I never thought I'd see-"

Before Axel gets a change to finish, Riku tackles him off Emily with all the grace of a rampaging gorilla. He slams the red-haired man against a nearby vat, jostling the pair of half-finished wings within. With Axel held by his collar and pressed off his feet onto the vat by a crossed arm, Riku summons his keyblade and brings it right up to his throat.

"Easy there, tiger," Axel chuckles, Xion starting to move in, "No, Xion, don't: I've got this."

"Give me a reason!" Riku commands, his eyes wild and face contorted with rage, "Give me a reason so I can just friggin' _end_ this here and now!"

"Come on, Riku," Axel says with a smile, "You know I mean no harm."

"Oh, _bull_," Riku spits out, "You never 'mean any harm'. Of course not. That's why you spent twenty years with a murderous psychopath and only betrayed him for yourself."

"Oh, what the..." Axel responds, exasperated, "Riku, I tell you time and again: Xehanort kept those secrets from the rest of us. I was loyal to the Xehanort that hired me; not the one that wanted to murder a trillion people because he can't handle losing his emotions. And I asked for all this because what the hell else am I going to do with my life? I'm all over the old Xemnas Corp. press releases; I would _never_ be able to get any peace or funding without total secrecy."

"I don't believe you for even a _second_," Riku exclaims as he shoves harder, blood starting to trickle from Axel's neck.

"Go ahead: kill me," Axel dares, "You'll have to kill Xion as well and I assure you, she won't go down easy. No matter who wins, though: both of you will be screwed because I am the one with access to food and medicine. What are you going to do: go forage outside in the dying forests? The black holes are eating away the sunlight faster than the plants can evolve and it won't be long before only machinery that I'm still in the process of building will keep this planet habitable. Not like you can grasp something as big as that when you miss that obvious spy you only picked up for some gullible nookie."

"...spy?" Riku says, his face now torn between two conflicting states. Emily stares dumbfounded upon this statement: where is Axel going with this? Didn't she just follow his directions to the letter and accept his offer reluctantly?

"Yes, Riku," Axel says in a condescending voice, "Marle, here, who has a physique like a tank and a gait like a warrior, is really a spy. I've been with Xemnas Corp. long enough to see she's an obvious plant from a megacorporation sent to steal your technology and she hit the jackpot with you bringing her into my inner sanctum like this. Xion, if you will?"

Emily jolts with surprise as two dainty arms reach between her armpits and yank her back by the shoulders. Instinctively trying as she might, Emily can't even budge this iron grasp. Now this is a really strong girl given her total lack of anything resembling visible strength...

"I'm not going to hurt you," Xion whispers, barely audible only to Emily. Riku apparently decides upon a course of action, letting Axel down and desummoning his keyblade

"See, Riku?" Axel says, wiping the beads of blood from his neck, "It's crap like this that makes you a bad judge of character."

"How... could you, Marle?" Riku starts, really uncomfortable, "I thought we... had something."

"...what can I say?" Emily improvises, voice wooden as she thinks furiously, "I was... hired... because I'm... the best. It was easy to get you to take me in, but... I... didn't expect to be brought here. I... just wanted to steal prof... Grandmaster Uina's stuff, but when... Darkside destroyed that planet, I... thought that was the end. This... Xemnas Corp.'s unreleased technology... would have been my... greatest triumph... oh, god."

"Oh, please," Axel starts, "You guys are the worst actors I've ever seen. She _obviously_ works for you guys if Uina is a 'professor'; what's her real name, Riku?"

"...Kiko," Riku responds, sighing with defeat.

"_See?_ Was that so hard?" Axel says, a motion of his hand signaling for Xion to let Emily go, "And you're the ones that accuse me of lying about everything. Come on... we can either be best friends or worst enemies while we're stuck here on this planet. Considering I don't share my food with my enemies... yeah."

Axel walks up to Emily and gently lifts her hands again, eliciting a wince. Riku refrains from doing anything; probably for the better because Xion takes a position behind him.

"I'm sorry if I lost my cool," Axel apologizes, Riku making some sarcastic gesture behind his back, "I'm trying to be a good host and all, but Riku here would rather start fights over nothing. It's just childish and immature of him, but that doesn't give me the right to have you manhandled like that. Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?"

"Well, um..." Emily starts, noticing that Axel is staring at her wrist, "...could you fix my wrist?"

"Sure thing," Axel says, motioning Xion over, "Xion, if you will?"

Xion walks past Riku and stops next to Emily, lifting her bad arm up. With a slow wave of the hand and a green light flowing out, the lingering ache in Emily's wrist vanishes without a trace. Xion walks back to Riku as Emily tears the brace off, bending her wrist every which way to confirm her recovery. Feels so nice to be able to finally move without constant worry again.

"So, then, Marle..." Axel starts, pausing with a squint, "Kiko, Marle, Kiko, Marle... whatever. You can shed your human name once you become more than human. I'll talk with you about your training tomorrow at breakfast."

With that, Axel turns and walks over to Riku.

"I forgive you, Riku," Axel starts, fishing a thick golden amulet out from under his shirt collar, "Maybe you don't believe I trust you, but I do. Recognize this?"

"Wait a second..." Riku says, staring closely at the heavy jewelry, "That's... the Amulet of Nullification? But... Mickey said an excavation team found it and the runes at the site said it was the only one..."

"Is _that_ what Mickey told you?" Axel says, chuckling, "Is _everybody_ but me a compulsive liar? Mickey could have at least said 'a scientist made it' and just not mention which scientist made it. Again: 'Nothing's Mythical'. Even lost ancient technology had to be invented by _somebody_. Anyway, since you know _exactly_ what it is, I'm guessing you're the one that wanted it so you can train your real self?"

"...yes," Riku admits, "I never really got around to actually training full-time. All these emergencies kept stopping me."

"Breakfast tomorrow, Riku," Axel says, "We'll set up a full training program for your natural body. It's very important as an Intelligent Device wielder, after all; whatever muscle mass you possess gets multiplied several fold. You might think lifting 1600 pounds or whatever is impressive, but that's _nothing_ compared to what a properly built person like Marle slash Kiko here could do if she were given a device right now. She'd wipe the floor with you."

"Pffff..." Riku breathes.

"Well, anyway," Axel starts, all smiles again as he walks towards the jostled stasis tube and starts tapping something into the control panel, "I have some blood work to do. Xion will take you back to your rooms. Get some sleep, freshen up, I'll see you both in ten hours. Later!"


	70. Exact Words

There's something of a Tennenbaum family motto that seems quite appropriate for a situation like this: 'The third day is the anchor.' The logic goes that with a major change, the first day is the upheaval and the second day is the adjustment. The third day is the one where a routine starts to become apparent and it is with this that a person may judge if they can continue indefinitely.

So it is with Emily's new life on this bleak planet. She has no real issue with the boarding accommodations now that maintenance robots just like the academy's have fixed it up and taken residence as staff: maybe it's gloomy, but it's plush. While the food seems artificial, it's not as though it tastes bad or anything. And while the lack of television or internet might drive a lesser member of society to the brink of madness, Emily finds solace in the huge selection of books. Funny how she found a book that confirmed her suspicions about the tale of Dr. Moreau: it's by some vaguely familiar author named H.G. Wells. Fascinating how it morphed into distorted folklore.

However, there is something that genuinely bothers her the more she thinks about it: her agreement. While she has often fantasized about having a keyblade all her own and all the power that comes with it, the thought of it being a machine with nothing truly special about it kind of kills the mystique. Her climate suit is a machine, her guns are machines, and her supporting equipment are all machines; what's even the point of having a keyblade if it is just yet another machine? Perhaps it's a powerful machine, but still just a machine like any other. She wonders if she shouldn't take it lest she find herself no longer able to respect Sora and Riku the same way.

This question of faith has nothing on the other thing Axel wants to do: the wings. While the idea has grown less monstrous and more glamorous the more she thinks of it, it still doesn't change just how creepy the process itself appears. While she has imagined herself as an angelic figure in the past, that was more an abstract idea of power and control than a true desire to move and carry like one. The mere thought of lying on that operating room table for 26 hours as her body is cut apart and rebuilt with a five meter wide batch of foreign tissue makes her feel icky. She can't help but imagine that suddenly gaining wings will make her twitchy and awkward. There's also the fact that she would never again blend entirely into regular human society...

Still, she can't exactly express this as she eats her fried eggs and bacon alongside Riku and Axel. Axel holds good blackmail material on her and if she were to confide in Riku, he'd figure out she has something to hide. It certainly was pretty smart of Axel to tear down that cover story; she can't even pretend he's using that as his material. No, she'll just have to pray they get recalled off the planet before anything can be finalized. Given that Sora is due back in a few weeks, it won't be long.

"So, Kiko," Axel passively says in monotone, typing into his laptop with one hand while noshing on a biscuit with the other, "Did Riku not show you where the gym is?"

"He did," Emily responds.

"Ah, okay," Axel continues, "I was just trying to get an idea of your regime by the cameras, but you never went inside. Given that you're only about 10% body fat at 143.6 pounds, I was kind of expecting a pretty detailed regime just to keep the weight on. Is something wrong?"

"I kind of lost my old schedule..." Emily admits, "They changed it the week we got sent out."

"Ah," Axel says, "So I'm guessing that's four or five days off so far? Can't really objectify combat as focused exercise, after all."

"About that, yeah," Emily says.

"That's no good," Axel states, "Can't let you atrophy. What sort of training does UCoP do these days? Alternate cardio and resistance? Split schedule? Full body barbell? Resistance bands?"

"They had us do drills for a few hours," Emily explains, "Push-ups, long distance running, rope climbing, obstacle courses. Then we did some sitting class work. After that, we had lunch, a little break with personal coaching during that time once a week, then another physical class. After that, we had dinner and they also gave us a three day a week weight schedule for evenings and weekends."

"What kind of weight schedule, though?" Axel asks.

"I don't know what it was called specifically," Emily explains, "10-15 reps as fast as possible, six part movements, one minute rest. Every body part every session."

"Aren't they old-fashioned?" Axel sighs, shoving his plate over to Emily as he rises from his seat. She stares at the half-eaten breakfast as he starts up the portable stove.

"...what's this?" Emily asks, confused.

"Your free ride's over, airbags!" Axel starts in an imitation of a drill sergeant, cracking a couple eggs onto a frying pan, "Better eat up because you're on the _pain train_ now! You're gonna need every last nutrient if you want to be able to walk home when I'm done with you, pillows!"

"...what are you talking about?" Emily asks, confused. Riku doesn't seem too impressed by Axel's show; in fact, he seems to be exaggerating his boredom.

"I'm putting you on the Axel _**EXTRRRREEEEEMMMEEE**_ program," Axel continues, his voice guttural for that key word, "Sixteen weeks, four hours a day, and several pounds of food at the five meals you'll be shoveling into your puny stomach! When I'm finished with you, you're gonna bend steel with your pinkies and not even bother with opening doors before walking right through solid oak! Mickey might settle for mediocrity, but under my wing, you're gonna show butterboy Riku what it's like to be a _real_ man... even though you're a _girl!_"

"But I don't want to be all big and icky..." Emily starts, a glance to Riku revealing a noncommittal gaze, "I just want to be thin without my bones showing. You know... womanly."

"Oh, please," Axel starts, "Not that misconception. Men are attracted to _fitness_. Yes, women that are skinny-fat rather than fat-fat or skeletal are more attractive, but having good muscle tone and not running out of breath when you go up a flight of stairs is several fold moreso. Since you're not going to be using steroids or some other testosterone booster, you're not going to lose that natural layer of fat or get ripped very easily. You already look great and what I'm planning for you is better density and faster twitch; not bigger muscles per se. You will still look good... in fact, you'll look even better. More sculpted, more shapely."

"I kind of doubt that..." Emily sighs, staring down at her quickly accumulating food as Axel sends more stuff her way, "...sure."

"Good deal," Axel says with a clap, pulling out his cell phone type thing, "Hey, Xion. I'm gonna handle the training of butter boy and pillow girl today. Just keep the experiments company and update me if the model pans through. I'll be there in two hours. See ya."

"When did Xion become a scientist, anyway?" Riku asks.

"Not long after you saved her," Axel answers, sending one last plate of food Riku's way before sitting back down, "I wouldn't really call her a 'scientist'. A good lab assistant, yes, but she doesn't come up with many ideas of her own. I still wouldn't ask for anyone else in the universe to be by my side, though."

"Fun..." Riku says, prodding his food in obvious boredom.

"You ready for total _domination_, butterboy?" Axel asks.

"Your totally radical Blitzball coach act doesn't impress me," Riku flatly states, nibbling at his food some more.

"All work and no play, Riku..." Axel sighs.

* * *

.

* * *

"Come on! Over the head!" Axel forcefully commands from mere centimeters away from Emily's ear.

"Urrrrghhh..." Emily struggles, the weight of the loaded barbell gradually driving her bent arms downwards. Her body doesn't exactly care to bring this hunk of metal from the front of her chest to over her head.

"Drive it! Drive it!" Axel commands.

"I can't!" Emily responds, her elbows sore beyond belief, "Too many reps."

"You can do this!" Axel encourages.

"My bones feel like they're going to snap," Emily whimpers.

"No they aren't," Axel insists, "They're telling you to finish what you started! Come on! Squeeze it! Tense up your whole body!"

"I _am_ squeezing! I _am_ tensing!" Emily retorts.

"Shove it!" Axel commands anyway, "Shooooovvveee ittttt~!"

"Arrrrrggghhh..." Emily lets out as she throws all her force into this weight with wild abandon. She feels the tissue by her elbows and shoulders painfully twitch like stretched rubber bands suddenly let go. This painful sensation increases to near-blinding levels as the weight passes by her face, but to her surprise, she manages to pull through. Finishing her motion and moving one foot behind the other, her arms and knees start wobbling under the crushing force of this molded steel.

"...drop," Axel finally states after what must have been an eternity. Emily is only too happy to comply, swiveling her arms forward a little and dropping the barbell right onto the padded floor.

"God _damn_," Emily states, starting to falter towards the ground. There's nothing she wants more than to take a load off right there, but Axel grabs her by the shoulders before she gets a chance.

"No, Kiko," Axel states, bringing her back to her feet, "Keep the blood out of your stomach and in your muscles. Come on; let's get you fed."

So finishes Emily's very first personal training session with esteemed biologist Axel. She certainly never expected any scientist to ever take on the role of fitness instructor, but given his qualifications, it holds a twisted logic. Who better than a person that understands the basic building blocks of life to know how to force them to grow in a certain way?

Emily can't say she's a big fan of this gym. Perhaps the Radiant Garden Academy spoiled her, but this place doesn't even have rubberized plates. Everything is just steel, steel, steel. Steel circle plates with no grips, steel handles for the cable machines, steel weight machines, and just the barest layer of vinyl over steel benches. No comfort, no padding, no protection; bruises, calluses, and friction burn everywhere. The closest thing to an update Axel has given this place is a portable fridge and blender to which he now leads Emily.

"See, Riku?" Axel comments as he fishes out some milk and powder, "That's how you do it."

"Whatever," Riku dismisses, continuing his jump rope. Snap, snap, snap... it's really kind of irritating, but that's just how the exercise goes. Emily wobbles around a little as she waits for Axel to finish mixing her shake. She must have been pushed way too hard given her this burning sensation all over. This has never happened with anything the school has assigned her; does Axel really know what he's doing?

"Here you go," Axel says, handing over a vanilla smoothie of some kind straight from the blender cup, "Drink up."

"Thanks..." Emily sighs, downing the chalky substance. If there's one thing that's going to get old really fast, it's this before-during-after cycle of crappy tasting drinks. Perhaps given time, she'll adjust. It's supposed to have a whole lot of complex carbs, protein, creatine, arginine, glutamine, lots of other -ines, and some stuff to help regulate water levels. Axel claims there are no steroids or other unnatural testosterone boosters, but who is to say he's entirely honest?

Some type of beeping noise issues forth from Axel's lab coat. Kind of a low-fi version of 'Livin' on a Prayer'... guess that's Axel's favorite song or something. He fishes out his communicator device and flips it open to his ear.

"Yo, Xionnnn~," Axel starts, voice in false camaraderie mode, "What's up?... oh, just finished with pillows here and butterboy is winding down. Wha... really? More guests?... no, don't, I've got it. Stay there, I'll go handle... Our lucky day, huh? Take your meds, I'll see ya in the hour."

"Guests?" Riku asks in a hopeful tone, slowing down his pace.

"Did I say to stop, butterboy?" Axel asks, voice back to coach mode.

"I only had ten seconds left..." Riku says, doubtful.

"Ten seconds is everything, Pillsbury," Axel retorts, "Two minutes, double-time."

"Whatever..." Riku sighs, resuming his workout. Snap-snap-snap-snap-snap-snap-snap-snap-snap-snap-snap-snap-snap-snap-snap-snap-snap...

"So, Kiko..." Axel says, his voice losing its tone, "Does the name '_Four Winds_' mean anything to you?"

"That's Grandmaster Uina's ship," Emily responds.

"Really?" Axel starts, his voice giddy, "That guy's _awesome!_"

"Uina? Awesome? Really?" Emily quips.

"Hey!" Axel starts, mixing up another shake, "Pay your dues: the man's a genius. I still can't figure out why he turned down Xehanort's job offer. It's not like Mickey was offering anything close to the same salary."

"Whatever you say..." Emily responds. Axel must have the wrong idea about Uina. Sure, he might be a good engineer, but he's hardly a 'genius' or anything.

"You can stop now, butterboy," Axel states, Riku only too happy to comply, "Good hustle, everybody. Airbags got through the whole regime even when I put her past the thresholds and butterboy... crashed out after three pathetic lifts. No worries, no worries; it's not like losing to a _girl_ is dishonorable or anything. No challenges to your manhood or anything. You'll get it _tomorrow_, butterboy."

"I don't care," Riku dismisses, taking the cup and drinking it with bottom up.

"Well, then," Axel says with a clap, "Let's not keep the Grandmaster waiting, shall we?"

**

* * *

**.**

* * *

**

Back to the train station square again, with its wooden clock tower and bricked court. Emily must give credit to these robots Axel and company have on standby: they did an incredible job of patching up the area and moving Sora's shipwreck somewhere else. Kind of lucky that Axel didn't bother to search the old climate suit; not only were her knives still sheathed, the prism was still in her pack. Good to see Axel respects her property rights even to the point of disregarding his own safety.

He certainly isn't hedging any bets on Uina landing somewhere else. Spotlights, smoke flares, a big sign saying 'land here'... the works. Emily is sure that if he had enough time, Axel would have erected a proper landing pad right then and there. Still, it's more than enough to bring him in. Here comes a large, dark grey ship. Looks kind of like a really bloated bird of prey now that she thinks of it. That hawk could use a diet...

With a heavy stomp that devastates the freshly-repaired stonework, the ship lands with little fanfare. Engines die down, pistons spew steam, yawn. Why Axel is treating this as some big event, Emily will never know. Less than a minute after landing, the loading ramp lowers to reveal good old Uina with a giant suitcase and... could it be... Kairi?

"Kairi!" Riku shouts, tearful happiness on his face and voice as he runs towards the pink-clad girl.

"Riku!" Kairi shouts in turn, running towards Riku and locking into an embrace. Certainly a touching reunion; not like Uina or Axel really care.

"Hey, Uina, my man!" Axel says, his voice fawning.

"Oh... _you_," Uina says, his face dour, "No wonder Mickey was so evasive about the details..."

"Slap me some skin, bro," Axel says, offering his hand as he starts walking up the ramp.

"Don't touch me, Lea," Uina states, stepping back a step and holding his free hand to his chest with palm forward, "I am _not_ in the mood. Get off my ship."

"Oh, come on, bro," Axel says, holding his hands up as he backs slowly off the ramp, "Why so cold? I'm your biggest fan!"

"Do you have a place with running water?" Uina asks curtly.

"Well, the Gothica, but-" Axel attempts.

"Good," Uina sighs as he starts down the ramp, his suitcase brushing Axel off to the side. He's certainly not making any attempt to endear himself to his host.

"Come onnnnnn~," Axel calls out, his face going back to neutral shortly after. He stares at the rather rude man for a minute before using two fingers to pull the skin below his right eye down, sticking his tongue out in the process. Without so much as a flinch to look backwards, Uina brings his free hand up to his shoulder and flips Axel the bird. How professional... Emily is going to have to ask what's up with Axel. It's easy enough to think Riku might have some unjustified bad blood, but Uina as well? Maybe Axel is a bit annoying, but he doesn't seem sinister or anything...

"Eh..." Axel shrugs, walking up to the embracing pair, "Yo, Kair-"

"**You stay the ****hell away from her**," Riku commands with a positively hellish, guttural tone as he glances with an unquenchable fire in his eyes. Axel stops right in his tracks mid-step, his face going neutral as he appears to weigh his options. After a couple seconds, he swivels a full 180 on his heel and walks back to Emily.

"You're still my friend, right?" Axel asks, mimicking a sympathetic tone of voice.

"Er... sure..." Emily says, noncommittal. What can she say? She barely knows the guy.

"I'll be in my lab if you need me..." Axel mopes, starting down that lonely path to the city. Kairi slowly breaks the embrace, disappointment and concern on her face.

"Riku, why did you do that?" Kairi asks.

"He doesn't care about your safety," Riku starts, "He-"

"That's not true!" Kairi interrupts, "When Organization XIII had me, he was the one that took care of me! He's our friend!"

"Stockholm syndrome..." Riku comments.

"That's just insulting," Kairi states, frowning at Riku. Emily really has no clue what that term means, but both of them seem to know that it's not something to say lightly.

"...sorry," Riku offers, looking away in shame.

"Don't apologize to me," Kairi says in a stand-offish tone, "Apologize to Axel."

"...sure," Riku concedes, bringing his eyes back to the red-haired girl, "But promise me something, okay?"

"What do you need?" Kairi asks.

"Axel is going to ask you to be part of his experiments," Riku continues, "Say no."

"Why?" Kairi asks.

"Because they're experiments," Riku continues, pausing a second, "He's going to want to perform untested surgery on you and imbue what he calls 'Intelligent Devices'. They're not safe, they're not sanctioned, and they're irreversible changes. He already somehow tricked Kiko into it."

"I'm standing right here..." Emily comments.

"So?" Riku says in a dismissive fashion, "Prove me wrong."

"Riku!" Kairi berates harshly. Riku glances to her eyes for a second, then looks away while lightly coughing into his fist. Now that's just weird: Riku's always trying so hard to be polite around Kairi. Why is he refusing to even offer an insincere apology here? In spite of this blatant, uncharacteristic rudeness, Kairi's expression starts to turn from exasperation to a worried understanding.

"...wow," Kairi says, "You really _do_ care about this."

"Promise me," Riku reasserts, his gaze back upon Kairi's, "Axel is going to try to trick you into it. Don't let him."

"I promise," Kairi offers, "I will not let Axel force me into his experiments."

"Thank you," Riku responds.

"You're still apologizing to him," Kairi insists.

"I will," Riku assures, "Did you want to go see him now?"

"Yes!" Kairi says excitedly with a smile, eyes closed and a slight hop in her step.

"You sure?" Riku asks, starting to lead the way towards the city, "It's a little bit of a walk."

"Let's go!" Kairi exclaims, starting a short jog. She doesn't maintain it very long as Riku catches up, Emily not far behind. She stays behind the two because really: this is their reunion and she's not going to ruin it.

"Is Sora okay?" Riku finally asks.

"I don't know..." Kairi admits, her expression downing a little, "Something in my heart tells me he is."

"...okay," Riku shrugs. He doesn't exactly look convinced, but what is he going to say?

"How have you been, Kiko?" Kairi asks.

"...huh?" Emily responds, taken by surprised, "...I'm okay, I guess."

"That's good to hear," Kairi smiles, "What was Riku talking about before?"

"I told Axel I'd let him experiment on me..." Emily explains, "I figure... his plans all take months and we're not going to be here longer than a few weeks."

"How do you figure?" Riku asks, a bit more interested than usual.

"...I had a vision before we got on the _Algernon_," Emily explains, figuring there's no time like the present, "I saw Zima get destroyed by Darkside and Sora get flung to the far end of the universe. I don't know how I know this, but I do know he gets back to us in a week or two."

"...'kay," Riku says, doubtful, "That's why you called me a few times back on the ship, isn't it?"

"Yes," Emily answers.

"You did try to tell oth-" Riku attempts.

"Yes," Emily gets out of the way, "I told that Yeo commander and Sora about it. Neither believed me."

"Why not?" Riku asks, "Who's your source?"

"...Metadronis," Emily lies. As much as she wants to talk about the so-called cosmic destroyer, it would just be in poor tast-

"Liar," Riku dispels.

"...wha?" Emily mutters. Riku suddenly stops, Emily bumping up against him as he turns around.

"Look, Kiko," Riku starts, gently grabbing her by the shoulders, "_Everybody_ knows you've had a brain bug since Amaterasu. We've been politely ignoring it all these months because none of our detection shows it to be hostile or capable of making you its avatar. Mickey wanted you to come forth with it yourself, but since he's no longer in charge, I'm telling you to stop lying to us now."

"I'm sorry..." Emily says, glancing at her feet, "I wanted to tell you, but I was scared of the ethermute-"

"Ethermute?" Riku cuts in, chuckling as though she said something really childish, "That was banned during the first war! What are you talking about?"

"Well..." Emily starts, "Uina has some on-"

"Okay, Kiko," Riku interrupts again, still chuckling, "I don't know if you noticed this, but while Uina lacks a certain magical trait called _ethics_, but he does have something called _standards_. Mickey... King Mickey lets him keep all sorts of banned stuff, but he wouldn't use it unless you were glowing eyed, floating off the ground, throwing magical lightning at everything in the room _possessed_. That's not going to happen."

"...okay..." Emily concedes, "I'm glad I got that out of the way."

"Who's your source?" Riku asks.

"...that girl in black..." Emily explains, "Um... the one in the prism coffin."

"...why didn't we _think_ of that?" Riku says, smacking his head with his palm, "God, we're all so _stupid_."

"I have no clue what you guys are talking about..." Kairi comments.

"I'll explain later," Riku offers, "Anyway, Kiko: don't worry about it."

"...don't worry about it?" Emily responds as Riku turns back around, "She talks to me and says all this stuff in my dreams!"

"So?" Riku shrugs, "We can't do anything about it. Just write down anything that sounds important, ignore everything else. We'll talk about it later."

"...okay..." Emily concedes. Riku probably isn't the person to drill for information here; as he claims, he's not really the one doing the brain work in this operation. She'd almost be worried by the lax attitude to all of this, but if they don't care hard enough to even tell her for months on end, why should she?

"What were you talking about?" Kairi asks. Seems a bit soon; perhaps she thinks three minutes is 'later' enough?

"Kiko has a psychic link with someone," Riku explains, "It's harmless."

"Oh..." Kairi responds, thinking for a second, "I still don't get it."

"Eh... I don't know how to explain..." Riku admits. Emily suddenly realizes a perfectly valid topic of conversation; one that really shouldn't wait any longer. Considering they're now starting to walk past the gym with its vaguely turn-of-the-century design, it's only fitting.

"Riku?" Emily says.

"Yes?" Riku responds, surprisingly polite.

"You keep trashing on Axel..." Emily starts, Riku's polite face slipping a little, "...but you're letting him train you and feed you the same mixture of food and chemicals."

"Yeah," Riku admits, not a single bit of doubt in his voice, "So?"

"Well..." Emily continues, carefully, "Aren't you worried that... you know..."

"Kiko," Riku starts, "Axel may be a mad scientist, but he's a _scientist_. He's not going to slip something into my coffee to 'test' something. He'll want to control all the variables, strap me to lots of monitoring equipment, and make sure that it's the chemical itself that does something instead of an interaction with the ground beans, caffeine, or water. I think he's too smart to try to drug or poison me and while Mickey doesn't want anyone in the army to 'build a dependence on powders', I do at least know what kind of stuff he's giving me and it's safe. I can trust him just about... that far."

"Okay..." Emily trails off; what more can be said? She's still kind of on the fence about whether or not Axel can be trusted, but at least Riku doesn't believe him to be completely malicious or anything; it's kind of hard to tell what opinion he holds, actually. One minute, he's ranting about how Axel has it out for everybody and not to trust him, but the other, he's actually defending his intentions when it benefits him. One would think the last thing anyone would do is drink the powder purées of a mad biologist bent on universal revolution...

"...so," Riku starts, the group now only one intersection away from the lab, "How was Radiant Garden?"

"Oh, it was terrible," Kairi explains in a worried voice, "There were people with guns storming the castle gates. The defenses did a good job at first and the police tried their best to stop them, but by the time Professor Uina got me out, they were in the courtyard fighting the robots. I can't believe he wants to go back to that place."

"...wait, what?" Riku says after a short delay as he slows to a stop, apparently needing time to soak in that crucial detail. Kairi nearly bumps into him.

"He just came here to drop me off," Kairi starts, "He said he only had a few days before UCoP would start looking for him and-"

"CRAP!" Riku shouts out, turning and dashing back up the hill with little warning, "crapcrapcrapcrapcrap..."

"Riku!" Kairi calls out, her words doing nothing to so much as even slow him down. Isn't that unusual? Riku spends all that time and effort talking about how much he dislikes Uina, but it's probably a bit deeper than 'like' and 'dislike'. She'll just have to follow and see what's up.

"Oh, don't worry about him, Kiko," Kairi says in high spirits, Emily canceling her dash, "Can you show me where Axel's lab is?"

"Er..." Emily stalls, looking back and forth between Kairi and the path to the ship. This is certainly a tough decision: does she compromise her friendship with Kairi to find out what Riku's big deal is or does she keep leading her to the lab? While it initially seems like there's nothing to really lose but the immediacy of information by escorting Kairi, there's always the possibility that Riku would disapprove. After all, Kairi would be alone with Axel and that seems to be the last thing he wants. Still, leaving Kairi standing there could also be seen as disloyal and unwarranted. She just had her life uprooted by unfortunate circumstances and being left to stand in the middle of a ghost town for even half an hour could be an emotionally wracking gesture.

What to do, what to do... better to go with Kairi. She can pull off claiming she didn't know Riku's intentions, but leaving Kairi here alone is just direct, blatant poor taste. Reluctant but certain, Emily continues leading the red-haired girl to what Riku probably thinks is a scientific doom of harsh experiments and wild surgery. She can already imagine Axel with five centimeter thick gloves and goggles, cackling madly as he holds a two foot syringe in one hand and a handheld power saw in the other. Odds are, they're just going to meet, talk a little, maybe play some video games, and that's all there will be to it.

"So, Kiko," Kairi opens, "How have you been?"

"I've been good, I guess," Emily politely answers.

"Has Riku been okay?" Kairi asks, "I know he doesn't like Axel and he can be a pain sometimes, but he kind of looks like the darkness is starting to build up in him again. Has he been holding up well?"

"...yes," Emily half-lies. Maybe it would be a total lie if this were asked before Riku explained why he's willing to eat the stuff Axel gives him, but now, she genuinely doesn't know. Riku might have snapped on the ship, when Axel was holding her, and perhaps back when Axel was approaching Kairi, but... yeah...

"I'm happy to know he's doing okay," Kairi continues, smiles, "...I don't think we ever really got to talk with each other. You know... girl to girl."

"You're right," Emily admits, "You're always with Sora or Riku."

"I'm so jealous of you guys sometimes..." Kairi sighs, "You're all able to fight the Heartless and get out of trouble so easily. I can't imagine what that's like."

"I'm not really that strong..." Emily responds. As if deciding to test this claim, Kairi comes to a stop and suddenly but gently grabs Emily's arm. She pulls the arm straight out by the wrist with one hand and runs her other hand from the wrist up to the shoulder, squeezing at a few key places. After an almost-adorable punch to the stomach that doesn't so much as even provoke a reflex, Kairi lets the arm drop.

"You're really strong," Kairi says in fawning admiration, rolling her sleeves back and holding up her slender arms, "Look at me: I've got nothing."

"That's not true..." Emily starts, unable to even find an angle to compliment the weak limbs, "...you've got magic. I don't."

"Oh, really..." Kairi says in a doubtful voice, bringing her hands together at the wrist and stretching her fingers out perpendicular to the arms. Emily wonders what this could possibly be gesturing, but a white spark quickly answers that question. Appearing only long enough to register on the retinas, it suddenly turns into bright directional light right into Emily's eyes. Kind of like a high-beam on a car, with only a reflexive turn of the head and raise of the hand making it bearable.

"That's all the magic I have," Kairi says, stopping the assault of light, "You can lift heavy stuff, wrestle down Heartless your size, climb and jump without any effort, run really fast, and take a punch without any magic at all. I have a magic flashlight. How is that better?"

"...I don't know what to say..." Emily admits, blinking away the blots from her vision, "I think there must be something to you if... er... someone believes there are countless uses for a Princess of-"

"Maleficent," Kairi interrupts, "You mean Maleficent."

"...yeah..." Emily responds, uncomfortable. Well, so much for sidestepping that thorny issue. At least they're now walking up to the building and this conversation will be cut short by Axel's overacting.

"I don't know what Maleficent's plan was," Kairi explains, "Whatever it was, it wasn't about my spellcasting."

"I'm sorry to bring it up," Emily apologizes.

"Oh, don't be!" Kairi says, cheerful, "I promised I'd be strong for Sora. I'm taking medication and counseling to get over my trauma."

"...medication?" Emily echos softly in confusion, swinging over the massive steel doors to reveal Axel and a nude Xion in a hastily cleared off part of the lab. Harnesses and cranes hold Xion a meter off the ground by her fully extended wings, the tissue at her buds stretching. Dozens of intravenous tubes hooked up in a symmetrical order on thick points drain a dark red fluid similar to but not really coming across as blood, another set connected to her torso pumping obvious blood in. Garbed in full medical wear with hair net, surgical mask, and latex gloves is Axel, standing on a stepladder with a red-stained surgical hacksaw in one hand and some kind of baton with a sparkling white end in the other.

"Okay, Xion," Axel says in a total flat tone, voice muffled, "Last fiber. Is the harness secure?"

"Yes," Xion responds, just as flat.

"Snug? Firm?" Axel asks.

"Very," Xion reasserts.

"Okay," Axel continues, sliding the saw from the top of the back down underneath the wings to just a centimeter short of the bottom, "In five... four... three..."

With a set of sickening grinds and cracks, Axel hacks away at the last bit of connecting tissue with little subtlety or grace. Dark red fluid gradually trickles out with each back and forth repetition, dripping down Xion's back. The creepy part of this affair isn't so much the excruciating to watch sundering of a fully conscious person, but how she doesn't even flinch at having a huge part of her sawed off. One final cut bounces the wings upwards as the harnesses apparently pull them away, Axel quickly bringing the baton to the open wounds and cauterizing them in a shower of sparks.

"Urgh..." Kairi groans, holding a hand to her mouth as she averts her eyes. Axel turns to face, stepping down from his stepladder and placing the tools on a table.

"Hey, there, Kairi!" Axel calls out through his mask, pausing a second and removing it, "I'm sorry you had to see that."

"...it's okay," Kairi says after a short delay, bringing herself back to high spirits somehow. Xion casually drops herself from the harnesses and puts on a hospital gown that fails to hide her heavily scarred back, dragging a rolling rack of intravenous bags along. Lovely imagery here... at least she seems to be leaving the room without even so much as acknowledging the presence of guests. Axel casually drops his surgical garb to reveal a simple rubber jumpsuit, washing his hands extensively in a nearby sink.

"Why did you cut Xion's wings off?" Emily asks, getting this out of the way right now. It's a perfectly valid question and one not worth pushing aside out of any perceived politeness.

"I have a new revision and need to test it," Axel flatly states, toweling his hands thoroughly, "I can't test it when the old one is still on her back, can I?"

"I guess not..." Emily concedes, "Isn't that painful and bad for her, though?"

"Oh, Kiko, Kiko, Kiko..." Axel says as he walks to the female duo, his voice back to emotion, "I am a biological scientist. I know to pump my subjects so full of drugs that they could get surgery in the digestive track of a dragon and never get an infection... I'm sorry for that image, Kairi."

"No problem," Kairi says, her eye twitching a little as her brain seems to visualize that image by Axel's cue. Emily isn't too bothered by any of this stuff; she has seen way worse both on the field and as part of her training.

"So... where's butterboy?" Axel asks, evoking a tiny giggling fit from Kairi.

"He had to talk with Uina about something," Kairi casually dismisses, "Axel, how have you been? I thought you were dead all this time."

"So did I!" Axel responds, gesturing to follow as he turns, "Come! Let's go to a lounge. This isn't the place for a reunion."

"Nah, here is fine," Kairi says, walking up to a gigantic jar holding a set of white, feathery wings, "Are these angel wings?"

"I wouldn't call them 'angel' wings in the celestial sense," Axel explains, "But yes, just like that."

"That's so cool!" Kairi says, pushing her face up against the glass, "You can fly with them?"

"Of course," Axel responds, "Wouldn't be any point if you couldn't, would there?"

"Wow..." Kairi fawns, turning to face the black pair held near the ceiling by the harnesses, "How do they work?"

"Specialized magic cores that generate localized pressure bursts to provide loft," Axel explains, "Whirlwinds. I finished a working design for a pair that can fold in to just short of eleven centimeters off the back less than an hour ago. Only flexibility loss while retracted is at the hip when arching backwards, but you'll never encounter it unless you're a gymnast. Well above and beyond all expectations."

"I want it," Kairi states, succinct and to the point. Axel gazes blankly for a few seconds; as though this statement has caused something not unlike a computer freeze.

"...what?" Axel says, smiling and chuckling uncomfortably.

"I want it and my own keyblade..." Kairi continues, "...Intelligent Device, whatever. Sign me up!"

"Er..." Axel stalls, his eyes darting to the entrances and exits as he backs away slowly, "I really shouldn't..."

"Come on, Axel," Kairi pleads, moving in closer, "Aren't I your friend?"

"Well, yeah, but-" Axel attempts.

"Then let me be your knight," Kairi says as she kneels down, lightly grabbing Axel's palm with both her hands. As if acting out of reflex, he quickly snaps his hand away and takes a few more steps back.

"Hey, hey, please: don't touch me," Axel says, holding both hands up and palms facing forward. After a few seconds of maintaining this awkward kneel, Kairi's cheerful expression starts to falter as she looks to the ground. Emily can only wonder what she must be thinking; is she sad? Confused? Offended? As if answering that question, Kairi's expression turns into harsh irritation as she looks into Axel's eyes, rising up and grabbing his hands with all her might.

"What are you doing?" Axel asks, perturbed, as he tries to gently break the grip.

"You're giving away really big presents to someone you met a few days ago..." Kairi asks in a highly critical voice, pulling herself closer to her Axel as he tries to get away, "...but you can't give me anything?"

"Yes..." Axel says, managing to free one hand only to have Kairi grab the other with both, "Riku gave up on sheltering Kiko really easily... no offense, Kiko."

"None taken," Emily chimes in, not really wanted to get involved.

"What is Riku going to do?" Kairi asks, Axel inadvertently lifting her off her feet, "Beat you up because I'm forcing you? I am so _sick_ of everybody acting like I can't make my own decisions. I am not Sora or Riku's slave: I am my own person and I want everyone to treat me like it."

"Well, yes, that's true..." Axel admits, resigning himself to this pointless struggle, "But I am my own person as well and I'm not going to experiment on a post-traumatic stress suffering minor hopped up on anti-depressants with a frail body and a clingy, bloodthirsty childhood friend suffering from darkness-induced combat fatigue and looking for an excuse to kill me."

"I'll be sixteen tomorrow," Kairi states, apparently unfazed by the rest of that statement.

"Oh, um... happy early birthday," Axel says, "I'll bake you a cake."

"I don't _want_ a cake!" Kairi responds, her voice sounding insulted, "I want to feel _safe_ when Sora and Riku aren't around. I want to _help_ destroy the Heartless and save the universe instead of sitting around a castle doing _nothing_. I want people to _respect_ me instead of just lying about my skill and playing make-believe for 'training'. I don't _ever_ want to be rescued again. Aren't I your friend? Don't I deserve this?"

"Come on, Kairi..." Axel pleads, "Please don't do this to me. What happened to the kind and sweet little girl I risked my life to save?"

"She's standing right in front of you," Kairi responds, forcing an unconvincing smile to her face. Well, it's official: Kairi has gone off the deep end. Emily always wondered how someone as innocent and emotional as her could handle two violent kidnappings and some unstated but obviously harsh experiment performed by someone as unethical and actively malicious as Maleficent; turns out she didn't. It's kind of a sad sight to see somebody so desperate for something, anything to affirm her existence in the midst of great heroes and it's a great sign of integrity on Axel's part to decline.

"...Riku would kill me," Axel repeats.

"Nevermind Riku!" Kairi counters, "I'll talk him into it. We're going to be here for a long time, aren't we?"

"Yes..." Axel admits, "It would also take a few months to adjust for your magi readings, code your chromosomes 24-30, and grow the wings in the vat... are you really serious about this?"

"Yes," Kairi responds, letting go of Axel's hand. She must be convinced she has this in the bag.

"There's going to be a lot of pain and adjustment," Axel starts, walking over to one of the tables and opening a drawer, "Someone like Kiko here easily has the physique, discipline, and pain-threshold for this, but you're going to have to dedicate your life from here to surgery towards training for this. Are you okay with that?"

"Yes," Kairi reaffirms. Axel pulls out a vacuum-sealed plastic bag containing a pair of latex gloves, a strip of thin rubber, two wipes in their own plastic wraps, an adhesive bandage, and an empty syringe.

"You've given blood at the doctor before, right?" Axel asks, clearing a space for the bag on the nearby table and starting towards another.

"Yes," Kairi responds. Axel picks up a camcorder on a tripod, fiddling with the controls and cycling through some footage as he carries it over.

"Here's the deal," Axel starts, setting the tripod down and fixing the camera on Kairi, "I want to make it clear I am not forcing you into this. Kairi, tell the camera what you want."

"I want wings so I can fly and an Intelligent Device so I can fight the Heartless and help my friends," Kairi states with conviction.

"You are aware of and accept the risks?" Axel asks.

"Yes," Kairi affirms.

"You are aware that in order to perform my job as a scientist," Axel continues, "I will need to invade your personal privacy including, but not limited to, analyzing your full body without concern for your modesty and asking for private, potentially humiliating information about your physical and mental histories that much be met with full, sincere honesty?"

"Yes," Kairi affirms, flinching a little at the thought.

"You are aware that these changes are effectively irreversible?" Axel asks, "Intelligent Devices cannot be removed and while wings can be, I can do nothing about phantom limb pain that would justify the brain surgery risks. Is this acceptable?"

"Yes," Kairi affirms, giving only the slightest flinch. Suddenly, Emily makes a major connection in her mind and while it's probably rude, she just can't let this one wait.

"Hey, um, Axel..." Emily says, her voice wary.

"Yes, Kiko?" Axel asks, cranking the camera to face.

"Maleficent has some method to remove a keyblade..." Emily says, thinking of how to describe it as she looks away from the lens. Cameras make her kind of uncomfortable, but at least she knows this only has an audience of maybe five people.

"Leader Heartless with gems in their forehead?" Axel asks, "I think they're a compound of charoite, tanzanite, and chalcedony."

"Yeah..." Emily says. She has no clue if his specifics are correct, but he has the right idea.

"That's a great way to kill a person in the process," Axel responds, "Not exactly useful for me or Xion, dearest of all my friends. There are similar ways to remove a keyblade, but the problem is that Intelligent Devices completely merge with a person's magic core and there's no way we've yet discovered to remove one without the other. Good eye for detail, though, Kiko."

"Thanks," Emily responds. Axel cranks the camera back to Kairi.

"Moving along," Axel resumes, "In order to meet the physical requirements to sustain and utilize your desired augments, you will need to dedicate sixteen weeks to specialized training. Said training will involve up to twenty hours a week of resistance, flexibility, and cardiovascular fitness, a strictly regimented diet based around nutrients over taste, and a great deal of aches and pains. Is this acceptable?"

"Yes," Kairi affirms.

"This process requires genetic modification," Axel continues, "You will technically be considered a different subspecies I personally call _Homo sapiens pennae_ or 'Angels' as I just decided I'm going to use as a corporate branding, but the official name of which will be left up to the scientific community at large. Any children you have afterward will be this subspecies regardless of whether or not the father has had the same process applied to him. Is this acceptable?"

"Yes," Kairi affirms, holding back an impatient look.

"Because you will be considered a different subspecies with visible, external signs of such," Axel continues, "This will change the social dynamics around you. Some might look up to you, some might look down on you, others might treat you with hostility. This social change may spill over to legislature that will impose limits on your privacy, mobility, and other rights. Some worlds may choose to unilaterally ban all Angels and there is a distinct possibility of hate groups forming to hunt them down the same way some do with emigrated Yeo. Is this acceptable?"

"Yes," Kairi confirms, now holding back a self-doubting look.

"On that note," Axel continues, "You are aware of UCoP regulations on Potentially Harmful Empowered Individuals, or PHEIs, will require you to undergo registration, regular scheduled testing, and sign up with the Security Force as either a proper recruit or under the 'Mercenary' classification for possible draft in emergency situations... like the one I have to believe is happening outside our pocket solar system right now. Is this acceptable?"

"I already went through all that for my useless flashlight power," Kairi states, "So yes."

"As lead scientist of this project and a former twenty-five year veteran of the foremost research and development corporation of the universe," Axel starts, "I have the required training, mindset, and thorough dedication to the scientific process necessary to fully test all possible circumstances and adjust to them accordingly. However, as it is literally impossible to control all variables when living creatures with free will are involved, it is both possible and likely that unforeseen events both positive and negative may arise from the processes. While I will do everything to ensure a smooth transition and mitigate negative impacts on your well-being, because this is a highly experimental process with only one non-indicative test subject to undergo it so far, I cannot be held liable for anything not stemming from overt carelessness. Is this acceptable?"

"Yes," Kairi affirms without even a second's delay. Emily starts to wonder whether or not she fully comprehends all of this stuff.

"I ask again: do you trust me with your life and well-being?" Axel finishes.

"Yes, I do," Kairi insists.

"Do you have any allergies?" Axel follows up.

"Ye... no," Kairi quickly reverses.

"I'm not corny enough to have you sign a literal contract in blood," Axel comments, "But figuratively, you could see that as what I'm having you do. One of the most vital, basic parts of any biological research is the blood test. Over the next few months, we will have to periodically extract blood from your system for analysis. I will not be the first one to draw this blood, though: you will. Either arm at the vein, up to the blue line, maybe a little over, but definitely not under. No rush; feel free to do so whenever you're ready."

Kairi gives a thumbs up without letting her smile drop, turning to the table and tearing the bag open. With the first step being the tourniquet, it takes a few tries to put it on her left arm properly with only her right hand and teeth. Afterward, she grabs the syringe as she makes fists with her left hand, but remembers the wipe just before she pierces her skin. With her elbow crease numbed and disinfected, she brings the syringe back in place and holds the position. Her smile starts to falter a little as apprehension starts to creep on her face, the implications appearing to hit her. Is she going to wimp out or...

Turns out she does have the right stuff. With a jerky movement and a grimace on her face, she plunges the needle into her raised vein. Her right hand shakes a little as she watches the blood splurt into the glass tube, slowly filling up to a tiny blue light a few centimeters up. Just as her hand starts getting unstable short of knocking the syringe out, she forces a determined look on her face that seems to steady her nerves. She lets the blood fill well past the blue line before she yanks the needle out, planting it on the table and grabbing the other wipe from the bag. After thoroughly wiping down the puncture and placing the bandage on, she releases the tourniquet and gives a smiling thumbs up to the camera. Emily just stares at this display, unable to comprehend that Kairi would really go this far.

"...I didn't think you had it in you," Axel admits, chuckling uncomfortably, "That's just... wow. I don't believe it: my little girl Kairi has grown so much since I last saw her. Well, then... I think you've shown yourself serious enough to go all the way. Welcome aboard, my crazy angel."

"Thank you so much!" Kairi cheers, clapping her hands and closing her eyes in a wide smile. Axel cranks the camera back to Emily, taking her a little by surprise.

"Kiko," Axel starts, "You can confirm as my witness that the events on this video are factual and Kairi's statements were made competently without duress, correct?"

"Er..." Emily stalls, taking a second to remember what 'duress' refers to, "...yes."

"That's a wrap!" Axel says in an imitation of a movie director after pressing a button, unscrewing the camcorder from the tripod, "Do you feel okay, Kairi? No dizziness or shortness of breath?"

"No," Kairi states. Axel walks over to her, checking her arm with his free hand for a few seconds before letting it drop. He checks her pulse via neck vein before turning the camcorder so its screen is visible to her.

"Okay," Axel starts, pressing some buttons on the camcorder, "When you see Riku next, press this button and everything will play back. Please do this as soon as possible."

"Do you want me to go run to him right now?" Kairi asks, taking the camcorder delicately.

"Nah... I'll give you guys a lift," Axel offers, turning towards a far-off door, "I need to make a care package for the Grandmaster. Just wait outside and I'll be right out on the cart in a jiffy!"

**

* * *

**.

**

* * *

**And so, with this video contract in the can, the group starts driving up the winding city streets. With a narrow steel box strapped down to in the front passenger seat and the two girls sitting in back, Axel drives this cart at a rather worrisome speed. Sure, it's maybe sixty kilometers an hour at most, but it's not something to take lightly with only some wimpy lap belts and no walls or rails. Luckily, the bloated steel bird of prey comes within view fairly quickly, with Riku helping Uina move a nearby stack of wooden boxes on board. Kind of an unexpected sight; are they stealing the stuff? It's not like Axel gave them permission...

"Hey, Uina!" Axel calls out as he keeps driving, "Whatchu got there?"

"The classified parts of Sora's ship," Uina states, annoyed. Axel comes to an abrupt stop just short of the ramp, the steel case flinging itself over the flimsy lap belt and landing on the ground with a loud clank.

"Oh, cool! Which ones?" Axel asks, unstrapping his seatbelt and leaping over to the fallen case. Uina just glares at the red-haired man, letting out the air from the side of his mouth as he picks up the last two boxes and starts walking back up the ramp. Riku doesn't seem terribly enthused by this encounter, but then again, when has he ever? At least his spirits seem to be picking up the closer Kairi approaches, but concern falls on his face as his eyes catch the bandage.

"What did Axe-" Riku attempts, glaring in Axel's general direction.

"Riku, _no_," Kairi asserts, placing a hand on his shoulder just before he starts walking, "I have something to show you..."

"Don't leave just yet, Grandmaster: I've got a care package for you," Axel says, a soft metal clink emanating as he picks up the case. While Emily would like to watch over Riku to insure he doesn't do anything stupid, she can probably do a good enough job of that by watching Axel. She's only going to get this one opportunity to talk with Uina about anything for a very, very long time and she's not going to pass it up just because she can't think of something right now.

"Care package, huh?" Uina sighs as he straps down the remaining boxes, staring at the metal crate Axel lugs with all his might.

"I think you'll like it," Axel says, each step up the ramp straining his legs, "It's got food, water, medici-"

"Get it the _hell_ off my ship," Uina firmly states, quick-drawing his brass baton and pointing it at Axel's chest. A sure enough sign for anyone to stop.

"Oh, come on," Axel says, faking a smile, "It's-"

"No," Uina commands, a threatening orange sparkle appearing at the end of the baton, "Off."

"Aww..." Axel concedes, starting to walk backwards. Emily isn't quite sure if it's his underdeveloped physique or if he really did load the thing up that much, but his knees are definitely buckling more with each step. One step finally proves too much and tips him right off his feet, the metal case flipping open and spilling its contents all over the brick-tiled ground. Just as Axel claims, there's quite a bit of prepackaged food and medicine, but the red glint of a triangular object catches Emily's eye... wait a second...

"Wait..." Uina says, holstering his baton just as fast as he drew it, "Is that a prism key?"

"Maybe," Axel says, picking himself up off the ground and dusting himself off, "Do you know what it is?"

"I know what I think it is... let me check," Uina says, grabbing a pair of long-reach hazardous materials tongs with one hand and some kind of wand-like PDA with the other. He walks down the ramp and half a circle around the mess, very careful not to step in any of the loose pills lying around. Finding a spot just barely close enough to stand, Uina extends his tong-arm way, way out and picks the prism up. He shakes it really, really, really thoroughly from as many angles as he can manage before carefully bringing it within his other arm's reach, waving the PDA-wand over it.

"You don't really think I'm trying to poison you or anything, do you?" Axel asks, imitating the tone of one whose feelings have been hurt.

"Not poison," Uina answers, reading the PDA intently, "You're too much of a fanboy to try to hurt me. No. UCoP is going to scan the hell out of this ship when I get back and I do _not_ want to have to answer why I have traces of unregistered medicines or the fresh DNA of a dead criminal on board. I only hope the fans kept your hair and tissue out."

"Why didn't you just tell me that at the start?" Axel asks, taking several exaggerated steps back away from Uina.

"Because I also don't like you," Uina quips.

"Fair cop, guv'," Axel says in a mockingly subservient tone.

"It's the real deal," Uina confirms, sidestepping far away from the mess and placing the prism on the ground, "How did you know I'm hunting these?"

"I didn't," Axel admits, "I saw one in Kiko's stuff while I was moving her old suit and-"

"You got one, Kiko?" Uina asks as he shifts his attention, a little surprised.

"Yes..." Emily admits, now a little discomforted by the fact that Axel apparently did shuffle through her stuff, "That astronaut guy found it back on Zima, but I shot him with a really big gun and took it."

"I'm sure there's a lot more to it than that..." Uina sarcastically quips, "So I suppose Maleficent and company know we have a real prism now... keep it."

"Why?" Emily asks, "What am I going to do with it?"

"_Nothing_," Uina says with conviction, tossing the tongs and PDA towards the prism as he walks back up the ramp, "Just the way I like it. This is the last place in the universe Maleficent and company are likely to look. Wait here, I've got the other two prisms and a case I built just for the full set."

"Hey, Kiko..." Axel whispers to Emily as Uina heads back inside, "What do the prisms do? We've had it for decades and Xehanort told us to shut up when we asked."

"...I don't know," Emily lies, figuring nothing good can come of telling him, "Professor... Grandmaster Uina didn't tell me anything."

"Liar..." Axel playfully whispers back. Uina walks back out with a brass and cobalt suitcase in his hand, its dimensions none too cumbersome. A meter wide, one and a half tall, and half a meter thick. The usual cliche of a handcuff dangles unused, key in lock. Emily has no clue why he bothered to include that when it's easy enough to cut the holder's hand off; perhaps it's just tradition? Riku and Kairi must have finished their conversation because they're now standing nearby to wave Uina off, the former looking kind of disgruntled.

"Here you go," Uina says, plopping the case down and kicking it into a slide straight to Emily, "I have to go report to my new overlords and probably get chewed out for deserting my post, so Riku, Kairi; stay safe, don't drink the tap water, and I'll be back when UCoP is done coping with its major upheaval. Take care."

"Hey, Uina," Axel calls out as he steps past Emily, irritation gripping Uina's face as he turns around to face.

"What?" Uina asks, eyes impatient.

"I have an idea," Axel starts, hopeful enthusiasm on his face, "We could go to a virtual reality room and shake hands there. None of my tissue will get on you."

"...that is the dumbest, most pointless thing I have ever heard," Uina harshly dismisses, pressing a button that starts raising the ramp without a second thought. As various bursts of steam and hydraulic motions prep the ship for take-off, Emily carefully cracks the case open while keeping one eye on Axel should he turn around. Sure enough, there are a pair of prisms within two of the six high-tech triangular holders, but lying loose-leaf are a couple of those lapis lazuli brooches. Emily pulls out a piece of paper, Uina's distinctive handwriting looking a bit rushed.

In case you have to leave before I see you next, here are some replacement brooches. If you lost your old one, don't wear them while Axel is around; he probably already scanned your real name and I don't want him to find out about these. Xemnas Corp didn't get where it was by being daft, after all. I smuggled a full armory of equipment for you into the room next to your's; you hopefully remember your basic lockpicking. God forbid you get any Heartless cores, there's a box I made just for that in there. I also included a prototype of Twilight's Javelin, but as a field untested, high yield weapon with only enough stress testing for a few shots, don't use it except in a dire emergency. Codes on everything are 3582, fingerprint scanner is set to your right thumb. Burn this message discreetly as soon as possible.

Emily quickly and quietly stuffs the note back into the case, walking over to the loose prism and stuffing it into a holder. Three down, one waiting at the hotel room and two undiscovered left to go. The standard issue warning lights and klaxons emanate from the ship, the engines flaring up. Everybody backs away to a safe range as the ship slowly hovers a couple hundred meters forward, landing gears retracting inwards just before the ship bursts diagonally upwards into the horizon at breakneck speed. The force of the wind knocks everybody back a little, the scattered pile of pills flying in a spray of colors and parked cart sliding with a painful screech. Well, there goes the only way off this planet for a long time...

"...say, Axel," Riku says in a very calm voice, turning to face.

"Yes?" Axel asks.

"Why didn't you give that same speech to Kiko?" Riku asks.

"...yeah, why didn't you?" Emily asks, figuring that it would look suspect to ignore this.

"Well, I figured Mis-TY here could figure out the risks pretty well..." Axel says, his stressed syllable taking a second to sink in. So the blackmail is still on... lovely.

"I guess..." Emily concedes.

"Well, then," Axel says, all smiles and cheers as he takes a few steps forward and turns to face everybody, "It looks like we have _three_ trainees now. Well, then, butterboy, pillows, bones; let's move-it to-it!"


	71. Causality Loop at Eleven

News room. Local TV station. Blue carpet, potted plants, artificial wood counter isle painted blue with black top. Stools with short backs, two American flags next to big TV screen on wall. Drywall, all painted blue, accented red and white. Patriotic, deceptive. Steel frame lights out of limited shooting frame, cameras in several directions. Wires everywhere, stale buffet table in corner. Workman, proletarian. Beach blonde woman in late thirties wearing a business suit with borderline sexist miniskirt, microphone in lapel. Fake, botox.

"Camera two, cut," male voice says.

"Thank you, Ken," woman says with dead stare, "In local election news, allegations of wrongdoing on the part of Senator Billett's daughter have been raised by a fellow student. Claims of abduction, aggravated battery, and more have been substantiated with video footage released to the internet earlier this afternoon. We have correspondent Fred Williams on the scene."

"Roll tape," male voice says. Click. Screen change. High school halls, lockers, posters, trophy cases. Students walking around, nondescript.

"It was a night like any other at Hometown High," disembodied baritone male voice says, screen changes to different angle of same shots, "Most of the students had left long before building closing time, but one student on the school paper stayed as late as he could. The time was eight thirty when tragedy struck."

Screen change. Tidy classroom with American flag and math equations on chalkboard. Scholarly, logical. Camera framed on attractive girl sitting at desk.

"I'm just shocked by this video," girl says, "Why would Dana do something like that? It makes no sense."

Screen change. Lunch room, students walking around. Some goofing off at tables.

"According to a video taken and narrated by a teacher," voice says, "Dana Billett, daughter of respected eighteen year incumbent senator Christopher Billett, and three friends kidnapped a boy in the parking lot. The teacher followed them to an abandoned building and filmed more than twenty six minutes of footage from the window. The video portrayed violent beatings, psychological torture, and sexual assault."

Screen change. Parking lot, beautiful German cars glistening in sun. Buff boy in Calvin Klein clothes. Fit, attractive.

"He's our history teacher," boy says, "He's just like that in class. He's always putting us down and taking away our stuff. I think he has it out for us because he's poor."

Screen change. Photo of teenage boy. Bad angle, bad saturation, bad facial expression. Face darkened, eyes narrow, full of blemishes. Ugly, untrustworthy.

"The accuser is a reporter for the school paper," voice says, "He used the paper to make many negative statements against Miss Billett in the past, but all were officially retracted. If this video is true, his claims that Miss Billett is, in his words, a 'violent, sadistic sociopath' may be correct."

Screen change. Locker room. Girl in cheerleader outfit, school colors, revealing cuts. Curvy, alluring.

"He's always going on about Dana," girl says, lots of blinks, "I just don't get where he's coming from. Dana is such a nice girl and she's a great leader of the cheerleading team. She's always kind and considerate and never tells us to shut up or that we're completely awful and could be replaced with untrained monkeys without anyone noticing. She's just perfect."

Screen change. Text boxes framed by Big City News logos. 'Allegations against senator's daughter' in upper left. Text appears as narration continues.

"According to the uploader," voice continues, "The police are '...paid off and corrupt. They ignored a 911 call, lost (or claimed they lost) this video once and dismissed it as invalid evidence without any qualifying reasons why thereafter.' The Hometown Police deny these allegations and mention they never received either a 911 call or a copy of the video until recently. The video uploader also commented that he '...sent it to many activists including Michael Moore.' Mr. Moore could not be reached for comment at this time to confirm this statement."

Screen change. Photo of Christopher Billett standing at podium, giving salute to audience. Bold, progressive.

"These allegations come less than a week from local elections," voice says, "Senator Christopher Billett is on record discouraging voters from letting these allegations affect their voting and says 'the timing of this video is suspicious and given the severity of the crimes portrayed, it seems suspect it took three weeks for these allegations to come up'."

Screen change. Dana in yearbook, head cheerleader outfit, great toned body. Victorious position, shiny white teeth. Powerful, trustworthy.

"Should these allegations against Dana Billett be proven," voice says, "She can be tried as an adult and face between ten and forty years in prison. This is Fred Williams, Hometown."

"Back to anchor," says another voice.

Screen change. Back to news room. Anchorwoman accompanied by others. Two men and one woman in suits... however, in between the two men in a girl in a flowing black dress. Her black hair is laser cut right at neck length, each strand completely perfect. Her purple eyes and soft face seem to glisten in spite of the harsh lighting; in fact, she almost looks radiant. Now here's a person so much better looking than the artificial, make-up heavy newspeople that surround her. She should be the one reporting the news instead of some washed-up cougar wannabe.

"We're here with a panel to discuss the impact of this video," woman says, "You were talking with me about the validity of this video just moments ago."

"Camera four, cut," male voice says.

"Yes, I was," man interrupts, "To be direct and to the point: I think it's a forgery. The narrator seems to just be in the right place at the right time and even though it's really heavy stuff, it took three weeks for them to release it?"

"Camera five, cut," male voice says.

"Well," unattractive other man says, uncertain, "The uploader said they went to police right after and-"

"Camera four, cut," male voice says.

"You mean the conspiracy angle?" first man interrupts, "That's the classic rallying call of nutjobs everywhere. No police records of any calls or visits to the precinct? Just say the _man_ is trying to keep the truth down! It's a classic UFO nutjob, 'man in black' theory to dismiss a lack of solid evidence."

"Camera six, cut," male voice says.

"One thing bugs me about that video besides the obvious planning," second woman says, "So the girls stomp on his face, punch him everywhere with brass knuckles, and even stabbed deep in the stomach. He must have been in awful condition. Why did he go to the _precinct_ twenty blocks away from the _hospital?_ They have a police officer on duty to report all violent crimes..."

"Come on over to the other side of the screen," the girl in black tastefully offers, "Life in the news room is so depressing. I'm ironically the only real person here."

The screen suddenly bends and flexes, everything on it save the girl in black distorting. With a sudden pop, the glass shatters to reveal the studio proper without the framing text or bottom scroll. No more stock prices, no more text bites; just the studio and all its focused glitz amidst a chaos of camera equipment and harsh lights. From behind the row of cameras emerges a girl in a simple flat-shaded body suit, brown hair with hazel eyes suggesting nothing too extraordinary. Plain, average... nothing like the paragon of dark beauty amidst the marionettes.

"Welcome back, my friend, to the show that never ends," the girl in black says in a sing-song tone, gesturing to her opposite number, "We're so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside."

"...editing software has come a long way since Windows 95..." man says.

"Do you really care what's happening here?" the girl in black asks, "Be honest with me here."

The girl with the hazel eyes tries to vocalize something, but her mouth just doesn't want to work. She wants to ask so many questions about so many topics, but as though no longer assisted by autonomous bodily functions, she cannot get it out. Kind of hard to appreciate the complexities of talking until one has to imagine every last element that goes into it.

"Coming up next," woman says, "An investigative report into video editing fraud on high profile websites. More after these messages."

"Oh, enough of you," the girl in black says, time stopping still in its tracks with a snap of her fingers, "You're still thinking too hard about your body. Body means nothing here; it's your mind that matters and you're limiting it when you ask how you're going to vocalize your thoughts. I only do this as a formality because our true psychic selves are meaningless and incomprehensible."

_What_

"Just like that," the girl in black says. Hazel eyes looks around in surprise, unsure of what just happened. Did she just bend reality all around her to make such a simple statement? May as well try it again.

_What do you want from me?_

"I thought I made that abundantly clear," the girl in black responds, "I want _you_ to want _me_. I want to be a faithful servant and sorceress knight to a fair and just mistress like yourself. I want to kneel before you and ask what you want. I want you to utilize me in every way you can imagine. I want you to demand of me the universe on a platter. I want you to exploit me for everything I have and keep asking for more. I want to follow your every order to the full letter and spirit, no matter how gruesome, how demeaning, how perverted it may be. I will do _anything_ for you and yes, even _that_."

_Why should I trust you?_

"Why should you trust anyone?" the girl in black counters, "Your friends are jerking you around. Sora and Riku were playing good cop-bad cop on you every step of the way. Mickey encouraged Riku to deceive you and ask for a date just to try and manipulate you into being a better soldier. Everyone you idolize has withheld information that you have every right to know. Leon, Aerith, and Yuffie are suddenly so friendly after they figure out you're a celestial transfer? Oh, please. They basically helped Mickey draft you into his army by implying you'd be sent to jail forever on a firearms charge. In fact, any lawyer worth their bar admission could get you out of that; hell, even a state assigned one would do it in a jiffy. And just to prove nothing has changed lately, they lied about knowing we've had this link for months. I kind of find that they call me a 'brain bug' really insulting; what I'm doing with you is something mystical and they should respect that."

Hazel eyed girl tries to think of some retort to these allegations, but what can she really say... or think, rather? It's all true. It all fits. The girl in black smiles in a predatory fashion, walking right through the anchor counter as it bursts apart in a shower of sparks.

"I'm the only person you can trust in this forsaken universe," the girl in black states, stopping less than a meter away from hazel eyes, "You are but a mere pawn in this futile battle between 'good' and 'evil'. Let me take you across the board. Let me make you my queen. You have nothing to lose but your weakness."

_If you're so trustworthy, why did the precursors curse and seal you?_

"Because they couldn't kill me," the girl in black explains, "You and I: we are immortal. It is the curse of all celestial transfers and even if we manage to get obliterated, we'll just regenerate elsewhere with a bad migraine headache. Kind of like that British show with the cheap plunger robots and the 'you will be exterminated!'"

"But seriously," the girl continues, "The precursors started a war with the universe because they believed in a purity of magic and superiority of humanity. They viewed what they called 'wild magic' to be a threat to their zealous ideal and set out on a crusade to purge the 'heretics'. Everything that wasn't human was to be killed, every practitioner of a different form of magic was to be weeded out, and they designed Kingdom Hearts and all its systems to regulate the universe as they saw fit."

"They killed me six times," the girl says, holding the thumb, index, and middle fingers of both hands up, "Six. I thought I could just hide the first two times, but when I found that wasn't the case, I fought back. I fought hard, I fought true, and each lucky shot that got through only made me stronger. When they finally figured out that it was the same person destroying their cities, they came up with this sad fate for little old me. Believe me when I say I didn't go down lightly, but obviously, they won and here I am."

"Luckily," the girl continues, "The damage was done. Their tampering with the universe spawned the original ancestors of the ever-evolving Heartless menace. In a great irony, the Intelligent Devices they proclaimed to be the pinnacle of engineering was their ultimate downfall. These creatures fed off the modified magic cores and all but the illiterate proletarians had an Intelligent Device. I think you can figure it out from there and because their plan was compromised before it could be finished, it plunged the universe into this sorry state. Does that answer your question?"

Hazel eyed girl tries to think of a response to this, but what can she say? She has no way to counter this. While it's always possible the girl in black might simply be lying, it begs a question of whether or not to simply distrust her because she seems 'evil' or whatever. It has already been proven that morality isn't quite so simple as obviously good versus obviously evil; for every extremist group like Organization XIII, there's a group like the Daeh Yeo Mar Empire that appears evil at a glance, but has a great loyalty and fierce safekeeping of its citizens. She'd also have to be willfully daft to deny the facts about her own group...

"You need a break," the girl in black says, "Tell you what: Axel's going to make you the greatest hero in the universe. When he's done with you, Sora and Riku won't even be able to touch you. It's everything you have ever dreamed of and more. Who knows... maybe you'll finally get Riku to love you? A famous man did once say power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. I'll see you then."

**

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**

Amaterasu. City of steel and glass, high rises and balconies, commerce and progress. A place where men can be men, women can be men, and those somewhere in between can also be men. It's a place of beauty and cleanliness; after all, what else can one do with so much money but develop the greatest sanitation system in the history of the universe and deport all the homeless people somewhere they cannot be seen? There is no grander backdrop for the emergence of a new hero than here and now at the doorstop of destiny.

Standing tall on the top of the mightiest building are two combatants, their stances proud and features magnificent. One side plays host to a woman of dark blue shoulder length hair and hazel eyes. With a V-taper and smooth lines all around, she stands imposing at an impressive five foot nine inches. Her dark blue mesh outfit, color coded to her hair, shows off every bit of her toned physique while holding resilient to that which may threaten her. This paragon of virtue is none other than Emily Tennenbaum, hero of the universe and savior of the downtrodden.

Opposing our young champion is another woman of much smaller stature. Her dark red hair shows a fire and fury that is cooled only by her icy blue eyes. Standing only five foot three, her wiry figure and thin face suggests a great flexibility and furtive demeanor. A real streamline woman. Melting the ice that is her figure is her loud outfit of patchwork purples and fuchsia. With shapes merging asymmetrically and pointless zippers everywhere, it looks like she went to a fashion show and decided to take everything all at once. Fire and ice, hot and cold; a real thermal explosion ready to be unleashed.

"Do you really want to go through with this?" Emily states, profound and concerned as she should be for a fellow human, "I'm not going to hold back on you."

"You shouldn't," the red-haired girl states, pointing defiantly with a predatory smile, "Because I won't!"

So the fight is on. With a mighty gesture, Red summons forth a grand machine into her lithe hands. Greys and whites, flat steel and chalk, bold lines and ridged circles. The flat meter-long paddle of a fifteen centimeter wide box, broken up only by a single banded hilt, springs and slides apart in a frenzy of snaps and whirs. This magnificent display of technological mastery settles upon a simple blade shape, sprouting forth a fierce beam of glowing red energy along the side. With two majestic swings that seem to bend the very air, she takes a trailing blade stance that reveals a fluid, reckless demeanor, full of surprise and unconcerned with any idea of a 'fair fight'.

As one would expect of such a great champion, Emily is far from unarmed. Oh, no; she has her own device of similar opulence and grander ambition. Summoning forth her own mechanized paddle, the machine shifts and slides to reveal an arm-length gun barrel held at the front and strapped at the elbow. With three rotating prongs along the side and a supernal blue glow from within, it announces its menace and tenacity quite loud and clear to all who may witness such a glorious display of grace and moxie. Better not go astray while she's around for her judgment comes swift and certain, with lots of pain and hospital bills and other things you'd prefer not to have happen to you.

That's certainly not a consideration that Red here has decided to heed, though. With a cloud of dust kicked behind her, she leaps off into a running dash with blade scraping apart the floor. Emily will not have any of this damage of municipal property, however, and takes her first mighty shot at the fiery young lass. With a swing just as mighty and certainly no less opulent, Red bats the energy off to the side with little effort. The bolt finds its way to a circling news helicopter, blowing it up but not before the occupants luckily jump out and parachute to safety. It's a good thing they saw it coming.

Emily doesn't let this faze her, however. Oh, no; she would not be the hero of the world if she allowed one parry to bring her down. With the prongs spinning up and blue energy cackling with power, she starts firing a rapid barrage at her tenacious target. Red swats away each bolt of this laser blitzkrieg aside with little care for the surrounding city, bright explosions sending a mist of broken glass all around the air. Try as she might, Emily cannot break through Red's iron defense for she never misses a beat in this deadly dance of flying energy. They're going to have to prove their mettle in glorious melee combat.

Shifting her prodigious weight and sturdy gun at the same time, Emily assumes a stance best fitting for the sparkling blue baton now residing in her hands. Before she even gets a chance to prepare for the oncoming onslaught, Red throws her off-hand forward and sends a burst of bright white light right into Emily's eyes. Such a dastardly diversion would throw off a lesser person, but would Emily be worth her stripes if she were to bow down to such a simple slight? Of course not. No, a hero like her plans for all such possibilities and this is merely one of them. Therein lies the difference between the greatest and the grave.

Feinting daze and disorientation, Emily recoils backwards and allows Red to make a reckless overhead slash. It's a good thing she can see just well enough through the fading green blur and with a jerk at the last possible second, she slams her blue baton against the red blade. All the weight of wiry Red thrown into the gravity of this planet can do nothing compared to the taut musculature and snap twitch of Emily's robust arm and as such, the slash finds itself easily deflected in a wide backwards arc that leaves its culprit wide open. All Emily has to do now is take the swing and that will be the end of this.

But it's not just Emily that holds her trump cards close to her chest. Of course not; what hero is without an adversary they can call their equal? Without so much as even a flinch, Red flings herself behind the weapon in a flurry of dislocation and relocation. Taking the side not threatened by the baton, Red dismisses the energy blade and pulls out a much smaller, thinner version of the sword from the shell of its own edge. It's only through Emily's quick reflexes and incredible flexibility that allows her to roll away from the follow-up attack. That does it: no more miss nice girl.

"You're getting old, my friend," Red states with a toothy smile, circling around with blade pointed at Emily.

"...I'm the same age as you," Emily declares, squinting at her baseless critic, "In fact, I think I'm a few months younger."

"Buzzkill," Red announces. Emily decides to take the initiative and swings her mighty baton through the air, the end of it breaking off and reforming into a spinning blade of energy homing at her opponent. As Red easily deflects it upwards, Emily rushes in and attempts a swing while she has this window. Doesn't work and it finds itself easily parried to the side, but then again, that's exactly as she planned it. Always a move ahead, she is.

Emily swiftly slashes a few more times, pushing forward just a little and allowing Red to pin her blade down and to the side. With her timing exact and her opponent preoccupied, Emily simply reaches up with her free hand and grabs the newly-formed, falling blue energy dagger by its hilt. Red barely reacts in time to this new development, relinquishing her rooted weapon and leaping back just a second too late to save her pride. The downwards slash of the fresh weapon cuts a wide gash through the jacket, exposing her skin for some nice, obligatory fanservice. It's a shame she wasn't two centimeters closer or she'd be bleeding like hell right now.

"One-oh," Emily declares defiantly, shifting the half-length baton into an almost-matching energy sword and spinning the dagger into a downwards grip, "Your move, hot shot."

"Come and get it!" Red boasts back, tapping her exposed skin as she shifts her energy sword back to neutral. Emily is much too smart to rush in blind; who knows what Red might have up her skimpy sleeve? Besides, it's always better to let the other person make the first move. It's wisdom like this that allows Emily to always come through on top in fights like these and prove herself as the true hero of this magnificent city.

Red finally takes the first move with another attempted blinding flash, but Emily is much too swift and simply blocks it with her raised arm. Still, Red holds position with her unformed paddle of a technological marvel held just behind her. The two girls circle each other precipitously, Emily blocking each attempted flash with little effort. Quite a tense minute of planning and counter-planning for these two grand combatants, their paths to a glorious victory over the other uncertain. It's not until the circling brings the pierced remnants of Red's larger sword just a few meters in front of Emily that she finally plays her card.

"Gotcha!" Red declares, swift-shifting her techno-paddle into a simple pistol and throwing it in a high, twirling arc. She follows up by feinting another blinding flash, but Emily is lucky to catch a glimpse of a firy ember just before blocking her eyes. A simple roll backwards evades the incoming fireball, but it's only by sheer, involuntary reflex that she blocks the laser blast of the twirling pistol with her energy blades. It hasn't even been a second and Red is already fleet of foot and sprinting forward, the remnants of the larger sword starting to shift and stir. Clever girl.

More raining laser blasts preoccupy Emily's energy blades, barely leaving her the room to react to another thrown fireball. It's a good thing she has the pattern figured and easily swats the fireball upwards as she moves to parry the next laser blast, but she didn't quite plan on the cinder bursting in a small incendiary explosion. Singed and disoriented, Emily takes a laser bolt to the shoulder that her mesh suit barely stops from piercing the skin before she gets back in the pattern. She has to hand it to her: that was a good shot.

Red smiles widely as she leaps towards the newly formed hollow sword, secure in her belief that victory is just as snug in her jaws as this hilt in her hand. Her momentum pulls the sword out of the ground behind as she raises her free hand for another fireball, instead sending a flash into Emily's unprepared eyes. All she has left to do is make that final attack and she will prove herself the champion of this fine city. Emily raises her blades in time to block the leaping downwards crush of the sword, but Red planned this just as well as Emily did her epic maneuver and grabs the pistol from its finished arc.

"No," Emily simply states, bending her wrists and pushing the sword behind her as Red starts to aim the gun. Before any shot can be fired, Emily headbutts Red in a brutal spray of blood from the nose, stunning the oversized sword out of her grasp and launching her into a rear slide that scrapes at her back. Just before it finishes, she slams on the ground and backflips right onto her feet. This is the look of somebody no longer enjoying this battle, her face bloodied and icy eyes melting with rage.

"That's not fair!" Red states in indignant rage, wiping the blood from her mouth and staring at her hand. A downwards flick of the wrist splatters a few splotches onto the ground, Red staring daggers at her archenemy.

"'Fair' went out the window the first time you flashed me," Emily responds defiantly. With Red armed only with her puny pistol and boiling with rage, Emily decides to be a sport and make the first move. Each desperate burst of the pistol finds itself met with a parry of the energy dagger, the wiry woman unwittingly backing towards the edge as Emily shifts her sword back into its neutral techno-paddle state. Everything in the right place and no matter what action Red takes, it's all over for her.

Emily finds quite a surprise as slashes forward with her dagger, Red awkwardly teleporting the remnants of the hollow sword into a disjointed club in her hand. Makes no difference and in fact, parrying with this unwieldy blunt object only makes this next step easier. Always one move ahead, Emily spins around on her heels out of the path of the pistol potshot and into a gruesome point-blank elbow right into the stomach. With Red stunned into dropping her weapons and launched right off the ceiling, Emily finishes her spin by shifting her paddle into a stubby energy shotgun and blasting a spray of lasers right into that same pulverized midsection. All it takes is the disappearance of the dropped weaponry to confirm that victory is her's.

"Gotcha!" Emily calls out in a mockingly shrill voice, swinging her weapons down to her sides as they shift back into neutral techno-paddles. What can she say? The challenger came into this ring with eyes for the belt and found herself lacking. Once again, the day is saved thanks to the magnificent prowess of none other than Emily Tennenbaum, hero of Amaterasu and the idol of a million posters that you can buy for five munny at any local supermarket, fast food joint, and comic store near you. Supplies limited, participation may vary. Buying said poster does not make your opinion any more valid when complaining on internet message boards about Emily Tennenbaum 'selling out' or 'jumping the shark'.

But no; it's not over yet. Of course not. It seems Red isn't quite 100% human, with a pair of red wings spanning five meters on her back and covered only a little by the detachable back of her outfit. Emily watches the burnt and bleeding red-head steadily rise into the air, each flap mysteriously summoning two vertical whirlwinds just underneath the wings that shove and stretch the appendages like organic sails. Truly a marvel of forced evolution to behold. Now forty meters overhead and apparently quite content, Red cups her wings in just a slight bit as visible heat starts pouring upwards from a few meters below. Only takes the rare flutter to counter her couple centimeter a second sink; effectively hovering in place, for all intents and purposes.

"Guess I won't be getting the 'No-Fly' gamer achievement, after all," Red laments with a sad laugh, summoning forth her techno-paddle and shifting it into two very thick armbands, "Try this on for size!"

Emily needs no further prompt to start running as fast as possible, desummoning her techno-paddles in the process. Certainly a very intelligent move on her part because Red's barrage of spherical orange bursts of energy utterly devastate everything in their path in a chain-explosion of intense fire and geysers of freshly molten steel. Each new flare thrown into this blaze finds itself ever-closer to Emily's heels, the flames licking at her like a cat savoring its pinned meal. Emily just barely manages to leap off the side just before the inferno finishes liquefying the top floor of this high rise, passing over the vast chasm and landing two stories down on the next rooftop through the mist of crystallized glass. A painful landing roll that sprains her ankle might seem bad, but given the situation, she's quite certain she came out of this great.

Unfortunately, a glimpse not even a second later reveals Emily's sense of security to be unfounded for there is Red, flapping into place as she summons a new swarm of glowing orange energy balls. Well, there's no way Emily is going to outrun this barrage, so it's with a heavy heart that she's going to have to perform this unspeakable action. Readying herself with a crouch on her good foot, she springs backwards off the side of the building just as the onslaught of fiery death starts its wave of mutilation upon this tower of steel and glass.

She hates how Red has forced her into this awkward situation, but given that she's unlikely to survive falling eighty stories, she's just going to have to bite the bullet and reveal she isn't exactly 100% human, either. With a forceful backwards swing of her arms, the back of her outfit bursts apart at the velcro center line to allow her own pair of magnificent black wings to spread in a majestic display of plumage. Sure, this revelation might impact her image quite a bit and make it harder for her target demographic to relate directly with her, but she finds solace in the marketing possibilities. A whole new line of dolls, action figures, posters, and comic books is nothing to sneeze at.

A simple shift of her weight brings her into a diving swoop, leveling out a good ten or so stories above the squeaky clean streets of destiny. Already, she can see the proud citizens looking up and pointing at her in awe and reverence. It appears for what it's worth, Emily's fretting and panicking over the public being unable to accept her was a big waste of time. The people love her, calling and cheering... oh, wait, now they're running and cowering in fear. What could it be? It isn't until a decently clear stretch of land that she's able to see the second winged shadow just behind her.

"There you are!" Red calls out with malicious glee. Emily only has to glance up for the shortest of seconds to find her pernicious pursuant packing a long-barrel energy rifle. Well, that's as good a sign as any to start taking evasive maneuvers. Streams of red energy fly past Emily and cut through the pavement, each shot only narrowly missing the fleeing pedestrians. While Red's poor aim insures that Emily is unlikely to be hit by anything but a stray blast, the narrow corridors and sharp turns of the buildings make circling to a better position unlikely. What to do, what to do...

Unable to abide by this reckless spray of lasers just waiting to hit a civilian, Emily decides to go with the absolute dumbest move possible. With a quick flap and a resonant shockwave, she dives up and breaks her forward momentum all at once. With her altitude perfect and Red taken off-guard, Emily spins in place and roundhouse kicks the wiry falcon right on her chest. Both let out painful yelps as the sudden impact at sixty kilometers an hour shatter a great many bones in both their bodies. Red spirals out of control towards the street, scraping off the ground and slamming into a lamppost in a brutal spray of blood and feather-patches. Definitely not walking away from that.

Unfortunately, the blinding pain that shoots through Emily's body leaves her with little control over her flight. She only just barely breaks her free-fall within meters of the street by swooping into a glide, but even barely rising above the traffic doesn't exactly change that an unlucky double-decker bus is barreling her way...

**

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**

The sounding a prolonged horn rings through the air, floodlights snapping on in a rhythmic pattern. This room, this technological marvel of a chamber, appears as little more than a heavily padded grid of black squares to the untrained eye. To someone like Emily, though, it's quite clear that it's a fully immersive virtual reality room capable of simulating literally anything and everything. One's wishes and desires can be granted in here so long as it has been programmed and given that there is a market of trillions, there is little that hasn't been released.

"Come on, ladies," calls out a male voice on the intercom, "Up we go!"

Emily bounces up to her feet, shaking off that lingering pain from her body. If there's one annoying element that proves how well this system works, it's the pain. Even after the simulation ends, her body is just so convinced of its reality that it still registers all the gashes and broken bones well after the plug is pulled. It's irritating, but still: how else is she going to adapt to battle if she's allowed to ignore her own thresholds?

A quick look around eventually reveals Kairi, lying on her back in a daze. It certainly is admirable how far she has come in these past sixteen weeks. While she's still based almost entirely around imitating the moves and tactics she has seen before, at least she's able to do that with admirable accuracy. Emily walks over and offers a gracious hand for the technical loser of this simulated death match.

"Ow ow ow ow..." Kairi mutters, wincing in pain as Emily hoists her back onto her feet, "...I'm sorry about that, Kiko."

"About what?" Emily asks, helping Kairi into a proper upright posture.

"Flashing you back there," Kairi admits, wobbling a little as she lets go, "It wasn't fair of me to do that."

"Don't worry about it," Emily responds, unsnapping her neural headband and pulling it off, "I never think about 'fair' when I'm on the battlefield. It would only get me killed."

"But you're my friend and I'm doing this to you..." Kairi says, looking away in shame, "I'm sorry, it's just... when I'm in there, I feel like I can do anything. I feel the possibilities of my device, the fibers of my wings, and my god, I can fly! It's just so... great. You know how it feels, don't you?"

"That simulation messes with my head," Emily admits, "It's really easy to get lost in it."

"I hate to kick you guys out, but, um... that's what I'm doing," that intercom voice announces. Emily and Kairi glance up at its source for a second before starting towards the door. Passing through the sliding black panel reveals Axel, slouching in a chair by a desktop computer hooked into the wall by thick cables. Not really a very high tech solution compared to the Radiant Garden Academy's solid state consoles, but then again, Axel had to rebuild the controls all by himself from spare scraps. He's putting on a good show with his false admiration, but a certain disappointment lingers below the surface.

"Good show, girls," Axel starts, tapping a few keys to shut the computer down and sliding off his chair, "I'm particularly proud of you, Kairi. Perhaps you've yet to win a battle, but you've come so far over these past sixteen weeks. You're still finding your style, of course, but you've learned enough from all of us to survive the basic Heartless and perhaps even best a leader. Do you think you can handle the full time responsibility of being a highly empowered badass, Kairi?"

"Yes!" Kairi says enthusiastically, eyes closed and smiling wide as she practically hops a little on her heels.

"My little girl Kairi sure has grown into a bold, powerful angel," Axel says with a smile, shifting to disappointment as he looks over to Emily, "Kairi is definitely ready for the surgery, but I can't sign off on you yet, Kiko. Seriously: you need to stop with this kamikaze crap. Don't you remember the seventh of my ten commandments of flight?"

"Thou shalt never come in contact with another flying object," Emily recites, "I figured it was-"

"No figure," Axel interrupts, "You could have just air-braked without swooping up and shot Kairi as she passed by. Come on, Kiko: this isn't rocket science here. You need to stop thinking like a human and start thinking like an angel. I'm going to have to hold off on your surgery for week or two at least. No more ground fight simulations for you; nothing but flight combat and maneuverability until you have those ten commandments burnt into your cerebral cortex."

"Darn..." Emily says, only half-heartedly sarcastic. She's still really iffy about the whole thing and would rather force some delays than go in apprehensive.

"Well, then," Axel starts, "I think buttered-corn boy is ready to hear the news. Shall we?"

With that, the group starts on its trail of victory to the gym. Kind of funny how Emily's expectation of leaving this place after only two weeks turned out completely unfounded. It kind of pisses her off that Sora didn't even bother to come here to announce the news of his adventures himself. It's just a total letdown to just have Uina ferry a care package consisting of a loose-leaf prism and a note insisting that it's better the universe think Riku and Kairi to be dead... well, what can they do about it? The news filtered from Uina seems to suggest a universe torn apart by a Darkside-fueled rampage, so maybe it is better hiding out here...

There goes Axel's Bon Jovi ringtone again. It's kind of annoying how he always seems to wait until its plays all the way through before picking it up. That chorus is forever etched in Emily's memory and she's starting to hear it in her dreams...

"Yo, Xion!" Axel says in that predictable cheer, Emily already groaning to the inevitable follow-up, "What up, mah hom... really? So soon? I'll go meet him. Start up the sequencers and ready a pair of... what color do you want, Kairi?"

"Dark red," Kairi enthusiastically answers as Axel swings the communicator over, "Just like my hair."

"Yep," Axel says as he swings the communicator back to his ear, "Kairi earned her wings and device. I'm so proud of my little girl for coming this far. It's been a long and winding road, but we now have our very first angel and boy, is she going to rock the universe like Bon Jovi multiplied by Queen to the factor of David Bowie... on fire! We'll see you in the hour!"

"Thank you so much, Axel," Kairi fawns, hands clasped in front of her. Emily still finds it a little disconcerting how quiet, demure, innocent Kairi is so willing to dive right into extensive body modification.

"Anything for my sweet soon-to-be angel," Axel says in a positively syrupy voice, cute-punching her chin in that sickeningly sweet manner. Well, at least they're now approaching the Twilight Town Gym in all its art deco glory. Axel's automated robots, their designs apparently stolen from Uina decades ago via corporate espionage, sure have done an awesome job cleaning this town up. It almost looks like more than four people are living here.

"I'll go get him," Axel says, turning around and almost bumping against the swinging door. There stands Riku, proud and athletic. Sure, he doesn't look anywhere near as buff or attractive as he does without his keyblade suppressed, but it certainly is nice to see that he's getting really good results. A far cry from the puffy cheeked, sluggish person of sixteen weeks ago and there's no doubt that once he takes off that medallion, he's going to be something just short of Hercules.

"Hi," Riku says, apathetic, "You forgot to restock the milk. I had to eat that stuff raw."

"Oh, don't worry about it," Axel says, sideways-smacking Riku on his arm in an affectionate manner, "The milk is just to make it go down easier. Eating it raw: now _that_ will make you hardcore."

"Sure, whatever..." Riku sighs. Axel starts to say something, but pauses for a second. He glances over at Kairi for a second before continuing.

"It must take a lot of work to keep hating me like this," Axel says with a smile, "Uina's coming by for another visit. Want to tag along?"

"Whatever, sure," Riku shrugs, "Probably more of Mickey's old contraband and bad news."

"You sound so enthused," Axel sarcastically remarks, "Shall we?"

Back up that winding hill again. It certainly is quite tiring to have everything require a long trip up or down an incline to get to one of the five important destinations, but that's hardly Axel's fault. He only inherited this planet, after all. He does certainly have an interesting point, though: why is Riku so intent on hating him even after sixteen weeks? Has he not lived up to his word to turn Riku's unempowered weakling self into something respectable? Has Axel not quadrupled his power as a keyblade wielder and no doubt secured his position as the greatest hero of the universe? Sora's going to be jealous when he next sees Riku in action...

The ragtag group emerges at the top of the hill to that discordant sight of an Organization XIII style landing pad in front of a rustic train station. While Emily thinks Axel's reasoning of 'leaving a strong impression with visitors' is bunk, it does at least have some logic in preserving the brick pavement. After all, it can't possibly be safe to have the ground torn up every time a ship has to land.

It doesn't take too long for that bloated falcon of a ship to swoop in, its ramp already lowering before its extending landing gears even touch the pad. Uina is getting really sloppy about these landings, but then again, it may just be his desire to spend at little time around Axel as possible... well, the revelation that Xemnas Corp. stole a lot of his inventions go a long way in justifying his hatred. Doesn't even take a second for Uina to emerge alongside... wait... is that...?

"...Chou?" Emily mutters, genuinely shocked to see the pink haired, pink eyed, silky membrane backed alien in all her weird glory. She even has that same fuchsia dress she started out with... although it's rather tattered and filthy. Not like the rest of her appears much better; she looks like she desperately needs to seek a bath to go with a fresh set of clothes...

"Riku!" Chou calls out, starting up that odd shuffling run to the semi-buff white-haired boy. Axel seems almost as surprised as Emily... although being a Nobody, it's more of a dull, slackjaw look than anything resembling genuine surprise. Why is he surprised, anyway? He doesn't know her.

"Chou!" Riku calls back, running into an embrace with her.

This brings up so many questions, all of them tying back to one simple reality: Emily has made no commitment whatsoever with the girl in black. How can Chou be here if Emily has to command it? Does this mean she's obligated to take up that offer in order to insure that no paradox happens? No, that's too far-fetched an answer and the belief that one has no free will to choose their own path is just too depressing a thought. No, Occam's razor has a much simpler explanation: the girl in black lied to try and force her. Still, she needs to get further proof before she can be certain this is the case...

"Doesn't it just warm the cackles of the heart to see another heartfelt reunion?" Uina comments dryly as he walks up to the remaining group, turning to Axel, "You're a genius biologist, aren't you, Lea? Able to figure out a solution to anything?"

"Of course!" Axel states, saluting Uina, "You want to hear about how I'm-"

"No," Uina cuts off, "I am a lot better off not knowing what the hell you're up to on this ass-corner of the universe. Do you know much about the Feylinus species?"

"I can't say that I do..." Axel admits, looking down in shame, "But it's not for lack of trying. Xemnas Corp. tried to get some samples and test subjects for me, but they could never capture a live one and their DNA breaks down real fast when they die. You think 'Chou' wi-"

"No," Uina cuts off.

"Oh, come o-" Axel attempts.

"No," Uina interrupts again.

"It's harmle-" Axel attempts once again.

"No," Uina maintains, Axel about to say something else, "No. Keep your scalpels, syringes, and scanners away from Chou. Mickey might still be missing after all these months, but you can bet your ass that he views Chou as his holy grail and if you do anything to her, I think you'll be facing some harsh contract renegotiation should he ever return. You can appreciate that reasoning, can't you?"

"I guess..." Axel sighs, disappointed, "What did you need?"

"Chou needs a special type of food," Uina explains, "Now that Mickey is missing, all his under-the-table arrangements have lapsed and that includes the expedition to harvest abandoned Feylinus nests for her food. Luckily, with the 'universe's foremost expert on everything that lives and breathes' in front of me, I think it's possible to recreate her natural ecosystem using some of her remaining food and samples of her DNA I collected myself."

"Wait, wait, wait..." Axel starts, holding his hand up as he looks away, "So you're telling me that I, a twenty-five year veteran biologist, can't touch Chou... but you, a Magitek engineer that doesn't even have a proper doctorate, can?"

"Yes," Uina flatly answers, "Not like it's worth as much as you'd think since she's some kind of self-spliced half-breed... look: are you going to do this for me or do I have to cut into your budget that's now coming from my own pocket to keep the expeditions going?"

"I'll do it," Axel answers, backing up a little and holding his palms forward, "Geez... let me _answer_ before you threaten me, alright?"

"Thank you," Uina curtly responds, turning around and walking back up the landing ramp without any further conversation. Axel glances over at Chou and mouths 'you stay the hell away from her' before turning and walking over to the nearby golf cart. Emily figures now is as good a time as any to get up to speed with the pink alien. Since Uina is leading a bunch of robots carrying huge boxes over to the cart, it's probably going to be a while.

"Hey, Chou," Emily says uncomfortably as she approaches, Kairi not far behind, "How is... stuff?"

"I'm so happy," Chou says through her tears of joy, Riku breaking the embrace so she can better address the group, "I'm just so happy to be back with my friends. You and Riku and... I'm sorry, I forgot your name, miss red hair, but I know you're really important to Riku and I'm happy to see you again, too."

"Thank you," Kairi says, weirded out a little but still happy.

"I thought you were dead back there," Emily inadvertently comments before Kairi gets her next words out, figuring she may as well just be candid about this, "How did you survive?"

"I don't really remember much after Riku cast a spell on that black bubble thing..." Chou starts with a shudder, a rather solemn look in her eyes, "I just remember being in this awful place. It was dark, cold, and I felt like I was falling forever. I felt like I was empty, like I had no body, no soul, no feelings and all I wanted was to fall asleep. It felt like... dying. If I hadn't shifted out, I'd have fallen asleep forever."

"Wait a second..." Emily says, "Shifted?"

"Don't you remember?" Chou asks, a little surprised, "You got that fruit back at the nest? It was what I needed to get Pyrmaolindr."

"Huh... oh," Emily mutters, taking a second to figure this out. Now that's a detail she could not be bothered to remember.

"It's been an awful time until now," Chou continues, "When I got out, I shifted right over to the Academy as fast as I could. The whole place was a mess. Everything was torn apart and I was all alone. I found my food, but I didn't know where anyone was and I had to wait there alone in the tower for all these months until Professor Uina finally found me and brought me here. I sometimes thought about just jumping off the tower, but I couldn't do that to you guys. You're all just too important to me."

"I'm happy to see you too, Chou..." Emily says without too much confidence, opening her arms a little, "You can hug me if you want."

Chou is all too eager to take up that invitation. Perhaps time has dulled her memories, but Chou is certainly a lot softer than Emily remembers. She does look a little sickly... perhaps it's a side effect of that? Still, it's at least kind of pleasant to be with her again. It takes a load off her mind to know that Chou is safe and sound; it's only generous to return the embrace and pat her on the back. The hanging pink tissue, reminiscent of wings now that she thinks of it, still has that clingy silk feel to them just as she remembers.

"Thank you," Chou purrs, stroking her chin in Emily's shoulder. Another few seconds go by before the pink alien finally breaks the embrace.

"...my name's Kairi," Kairi offers, holding her hand out, "Pleased to meet you."

"Thank you," Chou says, awkwardly squeezing Kairi's hand. Was she never taught about handshakes?

"Did Uina explain everything on the way here?" Riku asks.

"He just told me to stay really far away from the man with spiky red hair," Chou starts, confusion in her voice, "Why are we staying with a bad man? Shouldn't we try to get away from him?"

"...there are some thing I just can't explain," Riku admits, apparently unwilling to explain the intricacies of this particular relationship, "That's one of them. Axel might seem okay, but he's a mad scientist and might go crazy if he's around a Feylinus like yourself. He can't help it. Try to keep away from him, please."

"I don't understand..." Chou admits, "...but I'll do it."

"Thank you," Riku responds, turning towards that winding road leading back to the city, "I don't think Axel would complain too much if I get you set up in your own room. Shall we?"


	72. Anarchy in Radiant Garden

_I'm a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm.  
I'm a runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb.  
I am a world's forgotten boy.  
The one who searches and destroys._

So blares a rather crude, loud song over the speakers of this space ship. Harsh distortion, clipping, static; kind of like the interior of the ship itself. One has to admire how even with high tech machinery capable of traveling across the galaxy, one can still get that punk rock do-it-yourself motif going. Spray paint graffiti, tattered leather jackets with studded spikes, and monochrome posters of shirtless guys screaming into the microphone. One can barely even see the extensive steel infrastructure and monitors displaying information only a rocket scientist can interpret. A mixture of fancy and filthy.

"Please turn that off," complains a white haired boy as he mashes his hands against his ears. He certainly upholds the Greek ideal of strength and masculinity, what with his musculature barely contained by his mountain camouflage uniform.

"Oh, come on, Riku; I thought you liked punk rock?" comments a man exemplifying said punk rock ideal. Sure, his black hair is just a bit too long in the wrong places, but he certainly has it in glorious disarray. Perhaps he went a bit too far with his face paint and fake tattoos, but their tacky look combined with his raggedy cloth and leather outfit definitely screams 'screw the establishment'.

"I never liked punk rock," Riku answers in irritation, "I didn't like it during the second war and I certainly don't like it now. It's just... crass."

"But punk rock _is_ crass," the man counters, "Crass is punk rock."

"Please... at least think of Chou," Riku says, gesturing to the pink alien girl seated across from him. Her eyes almost seem to be swirling as she wobbles a little. The man takes a glance at her for a second before fishing out a remote and dismissing the song.

"I'm sorry, miss," the man apologizes, "I guess I should think about the friendly fire when I get into my 'music as a weapon' mind. You'll forgive me, won't you?"

"...huh?" Chou mutters, snapping back to attention. The man in punk clothes looks to Riku for a few seconds, the white haired boy giving a shrug. Apparently enough for him to just move right along.

"Yo, Simon," calls out another guy from the flight deck behind closed doors, "Olympus Valley comin' up in ten minutes."

"Stop the ship," the punk rocker now known as Simon commands, "Pull it over, park it here. Now."

"Wait, what?" Riku asks with a half-frowning stare, surprised.

"Look, Riku," Simon starts, his face going dead serious, "You're great. You're wonderful. You're spectacular. You're the unsung savior of the universe and I respect that. I might have brought you this far because you make a good case, but seriously, stop this secret agent crap. Right now, all I know is I'm breaking some genuine universal laws that move me right up from non-extradition political prisoner to full-time war criminal because you asked me to. That's fine, I'm with you, but not if you're going to leave me out of the loop."

"...I was told not to involve anyone else..." Riku admits, looking away suspiciously, "I don't think you want to know. You know... la resistance and all that."

"Riku," Simon says, circling around to get in view, "I want to join your underground uprising. I agree with you; UCoP without Mickey or Mithas are a bunch of limp-wristed bureaucrats that couldn't stop a Shadow from conquering their home base. The only way things will ever get done is by going rogue. Besides: what the hell else can I do? I can't exactly go back to my old job until we've destroyed blue and white, so sign me up! I want in. Let me be the Steve Jones to your Johnny Rotten."

"...what about your pilot?" Riku asks.

"Oh, forget him," Simon says with a dismissive hand wave, turning to face the flight deck, "Yo, Jamo!"

"What up?" answers the pilot named Jamo through the closed door.

"You gonna tattle on us?" Simon asks.

"No, sir!" Jamo calls back.

"Why not?" Simon asks.

"Because money is nothing and revolutions are fleeting," Jamo calls back, "SLB is forever and you, Simon Le Bon, are the best boss I could ever hope for."

"See?" Simon says, turning back to Riku, "He loves me. You were saying?"

"...Yen Sid talked to me in a dream," Riku explains, "He said 'the last prism awaits and the underground needs your expertise. Bring only your closest companions, the rest of us are waiting.'"

"Ah, Yen Sid," Simon comments, "That old kook, huh?"

"I think it's a trap," Riku states, "He has never talked to anyone in a dream before. Never. I never knew he could do such a thing and if he could, why didn't he use it to stop the Calcius Tragedy from happening?"

"Trap, huh?" Simon comments, "You're big on traps, aren't you? Just can't leave them alone?"

"We have no other leads," Riku states, "It's a risk we have to take. I want them alive, but dead is just fine by me."

"...I like your style," Simon says with a thumbs up, turning back to the closed door, "Yo, Jamo: take us in."

"Yes, sir!" Jamo calls out, the ship jolting back into action. Simon walks over to his guitar rack and picks up two fine instruments by their necks.

"What do you think, Riku?" Simon asks, "Should I go with the Johnny Ramone or the Joe Strummer?"

"I have no clue what you're talki-" Riku starts, interrupted by a sudden impact into the ship. The sound of steel twisting and glass shattering thunders through the ship as everybody and everything not strapped down launches back towards the far wall. A few more hits swaying the ship side by side seal the fate of this vessel, sending it in a free fall that slides everything forwards towards the flight deck. Riku barely tackles and pins Chou down to the floor before the inevitable crash sends everything in a whirlwind of flying debris. Well, if this thing didn't look punk rock before, it certainly looks punk rock now.

"...oh, lord," Simon says pretty loudly in horror. Riku looks up to see him slamming the flight deck door, his face just a little pale.

"What happened?" Riku asks to no avail. Simon sifts through the pile of the smashed guitars until he finds one still in reasonably good shape, strapping it on and grabbing a backpack of amp speakers. Riku realizes what's going on when he starts tuning the strings, scrapy distortion echoing loud and clear.

"Simon, wait," Riku says, helping Chou up from her dazed crumple on the floor.

"Looks like your trap has been sprung," Simon comments dryly, laughing uncomfortably as he finishes his adjustments and strums a basic E-chord, "We weren't even a thousand kilometers within range, either. These guys must be hardcore. Well, what are you waiting for, Johnny Rotten, Patti Smith? Let's give them a show they won't forget! For Jamo!"

"Simon, no!" Riku calls out as Simon kicks a lever forward. He starts playing some crude, scrapingly-distorted guitar scales as he leaps through the slowly opening, grinding bay door. He certainly plays one hell of a punk rock melody and the sounds of boulders shattering confirm his musical assault, but it appears his audience isn't quite so easily impressed. The melody suddenly turns to a high pitched whine as a bunch of sickening splortches ring out, blood spraying upwards through the widening crack of the bay door. A final couple smashes cut out that harsh noise once and for all.

"Chou, we have to go," Riku commands, "Shift us."

"I need a minute," Chou responds. Riku quickly glances over at the bay door for a second before he picks Chou up onto his shoulder, running to a suspicious panel on the side wall and kicking it down to reveal an escape hatch. Certainly a smarter path than standing and fighting a force that could take out Simon like paper. The two slide down a chute and emerge through an inconspicuous vent, bouncing a little off the stony surface with Chou sliding off and landing on her feet. As far as the two can see, they've been grounded in the middle of the mountains and all one can see in any direction is a set of marble ruins about fifty meters away. Perhaps that will work as cover until Chou readies her ability?

The two don't even get a chance to plot out their next move as a dark red laser cuts through, Riku only barely fast enough to shove Chou away to safety. Riku summons his keyblade and brings it up to block the incoming laser swarm, its source zooming in fast. Appears to be a burnt, twisted human trapped within an equally distorted astronaut suit... wait a second...

"Cenari?" Riku calls out in surprise as he rolls away from the rocket-assisted crash, taking position a good ten meters away, "I thought you were dead?"

"Oh, no," Cenari yells back in response, spinning on his heel and sending more beams to Riku's frantic parries, "You cannot bury me. You cannot smother me. You cannot murder me. I will not die until I proclaim eternal victory and until the empress is but a faint memory, I shall bring death and destruction to all I touch!"

"Oh, shut up!" Riku shouts, rushing in as he casually flings away each beam. The astronaut certainly isn't dumb enough to just hold position, leaping in a flurry of white smoke as he jetpacks to safety. Riku barely catches an incoming flank just in time, leaping back out of the way as a buff girl in a green dress comes crashing down in a spiky missile of green crystal. A couple of Cenari's lasers punch away at her crysoprase shell, ceasing after just a few too many accidental hits.

"Cenari!" the girl yells out in a fierce voice, dismissing the mass of crystal around her, "Friendly fire, goddammit!"

"You, too, Mint?" Riku asks, glancing over her blood-stained outfit, "Do you even know who you killed back there?"

"Some self-absorbed record executive," the girl named Mint responds, Cenari dropping in about 45 degrees of the circle away from her, "Do you expect me to feel remorse or something?"

"I guess Maleficent hasn't disposed of you yet..." Riku stalls, defensively sidestepping as his two opponents start circling him. Chou has to be ready by now. Her eyes are glowing and her hair is floating wildly; all the telltale signs of one ready for a shift. All he has to do now is get past these two aggressors and let her shift them to safety. Unfortunately, Mint doesn't seem to want to take up the bait... in fact, she seems to catch Riku's intent without even having to look around.

"Kill the Feylinus," Mint coldly commands, pointing backwards without taking her eyes off her opponent.

That statement sinks into Riku immediately, responding with a dash towards Cenari with as much speed as his wild abandon can muster. Unfortunately, even with Riku traveling fast enough to practically ignite the air behind him, Cenari unloads a full barrage of thick red lasers into Chou's unsuspecting midsection. Even as Riku slices the corrupted astronaut in half diagonally up the chest, the lasers keep shoving and disintegrating the pink alien through the air in a gruesome spray of charred ash. As Riku finishes his sidewards slice, the lasers finally turn off and allow what remains of Chou's limbs and gape-jaw head to crumple in a pile on the ground.

"Nooooo-" Riku starts to shout, a deep gash in his back literally cutting off his anguished scream. He swivels around with keyblade at the ready to parry the follow-up vertical slash, but doesn't quite catch the jab to his kidney from the side. The parameters of Mint's power now back in his mind, he leaps away from the dozen shooting spikes from her boot stones and assumes an uneasy defensive stance. Blood seems to pour out of his deep gashes by the bucket, but is he going to let that stop him? Of course not. He just needs to let the endorphins do their job and he'll be ready to punish this villain like the universe has never seen.

"Hello, Riku," calls out an icy, emotion-draining voice from just beyond the wreckage of the ship. Riku glances over without moving his head to see a sickly woman in a black cloak, her yellow eyes framed by two large vertical horns. With a long scepter in one hand and a raven perched on her other, she certainly makes it hard for one to 'see the good within'.

"Maleficent," Riku says through gritted teeth, sidestepping to get both of his enemies into his cone of vision.

"Riku, my dear, naive boy," Maleficent dryly responds, "I've missed you these past months. Your companions at the coalition might consider you dead, but you should know better than to think you can hide from me."

"Let's just end this," Riku spits out, rage building on his face, "You and me, one on one. Come on!"

"Riku, Riku, Riku," Maleficent starts, "When have I ever talked about a fair fight? I decline your invitation because only a fool limits themselves out of some misguided notion of 'honor'. Has all this time away from me dulled your mind?"

"...Mint," Riku starts, realizing the obvious exit to this situation, "Maleficent is only using you. I was her apprentice once. She had me kill the apprentice before me and threw me away when I was no longer of use to her. She has gone through countless minions before and you are no more special or valuable than any of them. Hell, she doesn't even care enough about Cenari to notice his corpse. Get out while you still can."

"Ha," Mint mocks, "You don't really think I'm going to trust you, do you? I just killed one of your friends and ordered another one executed right in front of you. You really think I'm going to trust you not to bury that keyblade in my back the moment it's turned?"

"Look, Malefic-" Riku attempts.

"_Nevermind_ Maleficent," Mint responds, dismissively waving her mistress off, "Even if I ever choose to leave Maleficent... and I might, I'm still going to destroy you. You can appreciate _that_, can't you? Now either fight back like a man or get on your knees and offer your neck to me because either way, here I co-"

"That isn't necessary, my apprentice..." Maleficent interrupts, "...not yet, anyway. Riku, this is my final offer: join us or-"

"Never!" Riku shouts, not needing to allow that sentence to finish to know better than to trust the sickly woman.

"Not for lack of trying," Maleficent coolly comments, turning to look at Mint, "Take him down, but keep him alive."

"Gladl-" Mint starts, stopping as Riku makes a sudden dash at her. While such a wild rush might have sealed Cenari's fate, Mint is much too lithe and aware to let this take her down. Riku's horizontal slash, his keyblade awash with burning red energy, slowly chops through Mint's summoned wall of green crystal. Even as she packs the density higher and higher around this approaching weapon, it starts to falter ever so slowly in the face of Riku's bulging arms and fierce determination. Even still, her face remains perfectly calm even as her eyes meet his.

All at once, the wall of crystal shatters as Riku's blade finishes its forceful slash. With his momentum no longer held back, he spins around on his feet as the flurry of shards lightly cut his a thousand tears in his outfit and skin no deeper than a papercut. He nearly stumbles over several times as he tries to regain control, eventually halting his human whirlwind as he wobbles around tenaciously. That was kind of stupid, but at least it-

Oh, no, it didn't. Mint casually walks right up behind him, lightly stabbing a pair of spikes into his shoulders and slashing outwards through his sleeves. She yanks him back by his hair as she digs her boot into his lower back, tearing his shirt off and kicking him face-first into the ground. She circles around in front of him as Riku pants into the ground, waiting until he glances up before she continues.

"Idiot," Mint dryly comments, throwing the shirt into the air and sending half a dozen spikes upwards into it. A wide, outwards gesture with her arms tears the shirt apart in a shower of wayward fabric.

"Weak," Maleficent coldly admonishes, "So weak. You can't even appreciate why I disposed of you in the first place. It's because your weak mind couldn't handle some two-bit thug like Xehan-"

"Shut up," Riku interrupts, tangible darkness hovering around his form as he almost seems to float to his feet, "**SHUT UP!**"

Mint crouches and punches both her fists into the ground as a thick shell of crystal envelops her, but it's not like it's going to do much good. In the blink of an eye, Riku dashes right through the gemstone pillar with trailing red energy almost appearing as a thin laser board. All at once, everything from point A to point B explodes in a chaotic inferno of fragmented rock and broken crystal. The flames, tainted by the darkness and seemingly draining the light from the area, burns the surrounding rock so thoroughly as to leave behind crude patches of glass. No way she sidestepped that one.

"...urrrrrggghhhhh..." Riku groans, dropping his keyblade with a clatter as he falls to his knees and starts a seizure right then and there. More tangible darkness washes over him, his blood gradually turning black as his wounds take on the texture of burnt steak. Just as the corruption almost takes total hold of him, he manages to reverse its process and contain it halfway through. Stuck on his knees and hands with loud, heavy pants escaping his mouth, he looks up in shock to see Mint towering over him.

"How..." Riku breathes, biting his tongue in a trickle of blackened blood as Mint forms a gigantic crystal hammer and slams him a good fifteen meters away with an upwards swing. She casually dismisses the hammer in a shower of vanishing shards as she walks right over and plants her boot on his face.

"You think so three-dimensionally," Mint comments, grabbing some circular gemstones and bending down as if to tie her laces. It's with this that Riku notices that a couple of the jewels in her outfit are missing, but it's not like this imparts any advantage as she pops the replacements right back in. Her outfit now back to its complete, sadly undamaged state, she digs her foot under his side and kicks him prone onto his belly.

"The esteemed Doctor Goldwater and our metal minion must be finished by now," Maleficent says as she passes by her apprentice at a brisk pace, "Extract the keyblade, but keep him al-"

"**RAAAAAARRRRRRGGGHH...**" Riku roars at the top of his lungs, prompting the two women to slowly turn and face. In spite of the severe punishment dealt to him just earlier, here he is, soaring through the air with keyblade pointed at Maleficent. He almost seems beastly in his animalistic leap, darkness pouring out of him by the gallon and trailing behind like the smoke of a meteor. With so much fierce determination revealed by his red glowing eyes, there's certainly no way he can be stopped now...

...Maleficent simply takes two steps to the side and turns around. Riku harmlessly impales the ground with all his might, the impact audibly snapping a great many of his bones in a gruesome display of dislocation. He holds onto his hilt with both hands as he twitches and spasms, his mouth foaming and skin turning a near-black violet. Whatever reason or compassion was once in this human has long since been pushed out, this empty shell of a person filling with darkness and corruption. Maleficent watches for a few seconds before she gently plants the bottom tip of her scepter on his shoulder and pushes him onto his back.

"Foolish boy," Maleficent comments, "It is my most sincere wish that the darkness spares you like it did before because I want you to think back on this day and despair. Despair over the friends we've killed in front of you and the ones yet to face their doom. Despair as you watch us reclaim this universe in the name of the rightful queen. And most of all, I want you to despair for you once held the key to the force that can defeat blue and white, but lost it to the one you hate most. You still have a good sixty years left in you and every second of them will be filled with the crushing despair that you could have joined us, but refused. Apprentice."

"Yes?" Mint dutifully responds, walking over and staring down at the convulsing wretch of a person below.

"Extract it," Maleficent orders, turning and walking away. Mint whips out a technological wand of some kind, a black gemstone held in by six angled spikes. A press of a recessed red button shoots out a purple beam that seems to rip and tear at the wretched shell of darkness-corrupted flesh, but time itself seems to slow down in the process. The tainted boy hovers up to a slow stop a good four meters above the ground, with a line of electricity forming to connect his hand to the keyblade. The final halt of time is confirmed as a set of sparks hang in mid-air, everything completely frozen. It takes a few seconds before a resonant voice calls out.

_You know what to do._

Reality almost seems to shatter as all at once. Riku slams back to the ground, flies back with keyblade pointed forward, rolls back up into Mint's boot, zooms backwards in a flash of explosions, backs up into his reforming shirt, slashes the astronaut apart deflects lasers leads-Chou-out-watches-Simon-get-splattered-ship-crash-talk-about-music-coverears-boardship-corporateheadquartersbigcity-teleportacademyteleport-browntownrunhotelbed-white flash

**

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**

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Once again, yet again, ad infinitum, etc., Emily wakes up in a cold sweat. Well, that was unexpected. She was kind of expecting to just waste away unused and forgotten in this far corner of the universe, but once again, yet again, ad infinitum, fate has called her to save Riku... or something. More interesting, still, is that statement at the end. It was unmistakably the black-haired girl; does this mean she's responsible for all these visions? That doesn't make any sense...

Well, no point agonizing over the details. Time appears to be about 3:47... what was the time frame of that vision? She didn't catch any details to tie it down... well, all the more reason to hurry. From what she can tell, Chou used some fancy teleport move to get Riku off this planet. If she's going to stop this future from happening, the first thing she needs to do is make sure Riku can't do anything. Approaching him is stupid given how he doesn't hold much respect for her, so it's better to go to the one who fawns over her and seems like she'd do anything if only asked...

Emily throws the covers off to the floor, jumping to her feet and skipping the shower straight to the wardrobe. As much as she'd like to hurry, it would be just a little tacky to just rush over naked. It takes a second for her to find her blue mesh outfit, with only a fresh set of underwear needed to get her set up. 3:51 and she's out the door. Just a few doors down this hallway and she'll once again save Riku from that recurring horrible fate. Perhaps she should be called 'Guardian of the Keyblade'?

Here it is: the thick wooden door of 341. Nothing too extraordinary. Given the size of these rooms, there's no way she's going to be heard but through wailing on the door.

"Hey, Chou!" Emily shouts, pounding on the door, "Open up! Open up, open up, open up, open-up open-up open-up openupopenupopenupopenup..."

Half a minute and no response. A glance back down the hallway doesn't show Riku approaching, but does she really want to take that chance? Emily twists the knob and slams the door open, something blocking her for just a second. No matter. She runs right in, searching around the dusty room for several seconds. Nothing. Is she too late?

"...Hi, Kiko," says a soft feminine voice from behind. Oh, thank lord. Emily turns around to find Chou lying in a pile under her back things, the dark skin of her chest showing through- wait, she's naked. Lovely.

"Clothing, dammit," Emily comments, averting her eyes from the disturbing alien physiology.

"I'm sorry," Chou says, "It just sounded like an emergency and I hurried as fast as I could."

"It is," Emily says, turning around some more as Chou walks by, "Sorry for yelling... did Riku talk to you yet?"

"No," Chou answers, the sound of a creaking closet door opening, "What's wrong?"

"Er..." Emily stalls, thinking of how to phrase this, "...I need your help."

"What do you need?" Chou asks, cloth shuffling. There's no way she's going to convince Chou to deny Riku. While she'd rather just stay away from this whole situation if the ambush had a range of over a thousand kilometers, it seems as though somebody has to go. If she comes back with the prism, Riku can't exactly justify going in, can he?

"...I need you to teleport... shift me around," Emily says, noticing the bags of food on the table and stuffing a couple in her pockets, "Are you dressed yet?"

"Are you sure?" Chou says, walking back into Emily's view wearing a white skin-tight T-shirt and cargo khakis, "Professor said not to leave my room."

"...we could end the war," Emily half-lies, "I know where the last prism is and we need to get it before Maleficent does. Come on, let's go!"

"Oh, okay," Chou says, heading to the door, "I'll go get Riku and Kair-"

"No," Emily interrupts, moving in to block, "Just us two."

"But-" Chou attempts.

"Kairi's going through the surgery in a few hours," Emily continues, "Riku's her best friend and she needs the support during this trying time."

"...well, okay," Chou admits. Emily is only glad she's not really the strongest-willed individual. Kind of feels nice to have such unconditional devotion...

"Okay, come with me," Emily says, leading the pink alien out into the hallway. Still no sign of Riku as they turn the corner, but is she really going to take that risk? Emily starts speed-walking straight to the door next to her's, Chou trailing behind as she jogs to catch up. Having already figured out that Axel isn't going to try the door unless he knows something is up, she simply opens it without any need for picking the lock. Isn't psychological profiling great?

Just as expected, here's the gigantic armory in lots of vertically-oriented luggage boxes. Kind of funny to see high-grade military hardware in these containers that look like they're owned by some crusty safari hunter. Emily starts her gearing by walking over to the table and picking up some brooches, adorning them on her neck and stuffing them under her outfit. Sure, she might have long abandoned that notion of collecting Heartless cores, but one can never be too prepared. Now for the guns and stuff...

"Hey, Chou," Kiko comments, grabbing and field-cleaning a two-type assault rifle "How much can you shift all at once?"

"...about two meters?" Chou answers, uncertain, as she drags a chair over and props it a pace or two in front of Kiko, "If I'm the chair, I could shift between where you and I stand."

"That sounds good," Kiko comments, placing the rifle on the chair and checking the handguns, "I guess we could..."

The sound of a distant elevator ding derails her train of thought, footsteps casually puttering through the halls. Chou seems to pick this up just fine and starts walking towards the door.

"I'll tell Ri-" Chou attempts. Before she can spoil the game, Kiko rushes up behind Chou and muffles her face with a cupped hand. As the pink alien starts instinctively struggling, Kiko uses her other arm to lift her up and hold her close. The footsteps continue right on by as Kiko backs away, Chou regaining her senses and going limp. With the footsteps far away, Kiko allows Chou loose.

"Why-" Chou attempts.

"No time," Kiko cuts off, rushing back to the armory and grabbing equipment willy-nilly, "We need to get out of here in 30 seconds tops. Olympus Valley."

"I've never been there," Chou responds, Kiko grabbing an empty duffel bag and stuffing the precisely molded steel and brass inside, "I can't shift anywhere I haven't been."

"...okay," Kiko sighs as she thinks of a good launching pad, forcing the zipper closed as the seams start to unravel just a little, "...how about the Academy?"

"But there's nothing there..." Chou says, sadly looking down. Kiko flings the bag over her shoulder and walks up to the pink alien, gently grabbing her by the shoulders. Assertive, but friendly.

"Please," Kiko pleads, "I know what I'm doing."

"...my food-" Chou attempts.

"I have it," Kiko assures, holding back her impatience, "Just shift us."

The sound of rapidly approaching footsteps sends Kiko into overdrive, only seconds left.

"Shift, dammit!" Kiko commands, gently shaking Chou, "Shift shift shift shift shift SHIFT SHIFT SHIFT GOD DAMN SHIF-"

**

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* * *

Kiko woozily stirs in place, her face planted against a cold stone floor. Not quite a smooth surface, with tiny pebbles embedded in her cheek. She isn't quite sure what just happened, but with this piercing headache, it must be something major. Did a shell explode near her and send her plummeting face first into the ground? Kind of feels that way... maybe opening her eyes would help. Searing pain from night vision burn force them shut again, but she catches a glimpse of Chou with a duffel bag amidst the rubble of some type of castle. What's going on...

"Are you okay?" Chou asks, concerned.

"...oh, yeah," Kiko mutters as she rubs her eyes, remembering her mission, "I feel like somebody hit me with a bat... how long has it been?"

"To us?" Chou asks, "About a second in shift and you've been on the floor for an hour or so. To the rest of the universe? About four days."

"I thought we teleported..." Kiko responds, slowly peaking her eyes open. Yep, it's the Academy in ruins and Chou sitting morose in a chair.

"It takes time," Chou explains, "I think it took me two weeks to shift from that ice planet over here."

"We have no time to waste, then," Kiko comments, springing to action, "Where in the castle are we?"

"The tower where we used to live," Chou answers.

Her eyes now fully adjusted, Kiko takes in the devastated environment. She always knew just how bad mob mentality can turn, but this is kind of ridiculous. It's as though they came in with sledgehammers and wrecking balls to tear apart everything that isn't bolted down... and most of the stuff that was, for that matter. One can tell that mass looting took place because of the total lack of anything even remotely technological and the piles of shattered dressers under the balcony show a certain obsession with leaving no stone unturned. It wouldn't surprise Kiko if the mob was stirred up by a criminal syndicate to loot the place...

Still, she needs to check her room. Her whole plan hinges on her room. Provided these ransackers didn't stoop to stealing business cards pinned to closet doors, there's no reason to believe it isn't still there. She just needs to get up there... where are the stairs? All she can see is a big pile of zig-zagging steel frames and a whole lot of broken wood... okay, now that's just unnecessary roughage. What to do, what to do...

"Hey, Chou," Kiko calls out, "I need you to shift me up to that balcony."

"No," Chou responds, flatly.

"Why not?" Kiko asks.

"Because it takes a lot out of me and I don't feel good," Chou retorts, "I need some food."

"...oh," Kiko responds as she walks back, fishing out a bag of purple stuff and handing it over, "Here you go."

"Thank you," Chou says politely, starting that dainty but undignified scooping that really bugs Kiko. Not like she has to stay there and watch. Come on... where's a way up? It's a shame there aren't any walls that link directly or she'd try a wall dash. Perhaps she could create a pile out of all the loose rubble? Nah, too time consuming. Must be a faster way...

...the miniature gym looks relatively untouched. Sure, all the electric stuff and most of the better weight machines have been stolen, but she can still see plenty of barbells and such. Improvisation time. She runs over, nearly slipping on the pile of broken glass as she enters the room. Sure enough, most of the barbells, dumbbells, and plates are still here, but there's something way, way better: the jump ropes. Jackpot.

Kiko grabs a few of the ropes, tying them together with a five kilo plate on an end for a makeshift fifteen-meter grappling hook. Not exactly anything she'd trust for the field, but given that she can easily survive the fall unharmed should it slip, it will do. She'd make a harness out of the various weight belts, but who is she kidding? She doesn't need one.

Kiko walks around the square, checking for the best mounting point. The railing really shows just how carelessly stuff was shoved overboard. Obviously, the interior designers didn't plan on people hoisting heavy wooden dressers right over the side... well, this part doesn't seem too bent. Here goes...

With a satisfying clink, the plate secures itself between two bars. Well, that was painless. Kiko starts shimmying up the rope, slipping just a little on one of the smooth plastic handles but otherwise fine. Ten meters up and only five to go...

Of course, even something as simple as just climbing back up to her apartment can't be uneventful. Oh, hell no. Her chosen mounting point proves to be just a little less than secure, with a sudden snap jolting her back a little. She looks back up to see the plate starting to bend the two supporting bars apart... no time to waste. She scampers up the rope as fast as she can, but the makeshift hook sides through the gap before she can get over the side. It's only through her luck that she just barely clings to a bar. That was close...

The slow sinking feeling and metallic snaps confirm that it's not over just yet. With the downwards bend and outwards motion taking her away from the balcony, Kiko starts scurrying hand over hand across the makeshift horizontal ladder. Each ping of a bolt flying out of the floor pierces her eardrums and one loose bar nearly sends her plummeting down, but she will not be stopped. She swings across the side to get on top and starts crawling over to the balcony. Almost there...

One dishearteningly loud snap nearly launches her over the side, the whole structure tearing itself in half at the center and ripping right off the balcony. Well, so much for this. She braces for impact... which actually turns out to not be too bad. In fact, the thing is now kind of an unstable ramp leading up to the perpendicular balcony ledge. Well, all's well that ends well. She simply crawls up the unstable metal ramp, with only the uneasy bounces of the twisted metal frame as anything resembling a hurdle. So much excitement for such a small task... maybe she'll just walk right in and out of the temple unimpeded if it's opposites day?

It takes a minute to find her door, the number blurred to the ages and sledgehammer impacts. Nice to see her room got just as ransacked as everybody else's... wait, where's the closet door? What the hell did- oh, there it is. Reduced to a pile of wooden rubble on the ground... did this mob have a hatred of doors or something? Rustling through the pieces finally reveals exactly what she's looking for: a business card for SLB with a penned in phone number, fluff message, and a smiley face. Cute. Just need to go back to Chou and shift over to a phone or something since there's obviously none still here.

"Hey, Chou," Kiko calls out, leaping down to the halfway mark of the rail and allowing the structure to collapse and take her down the rest of the way.

"Yes?" Chou responds, looking doubtfully at Kiko's card, "We came back here for a piece of paper?"

"We need to get back to town," Kiko explains, quickly scooping up the duffel bag and bringing her arms to Chou's shoulders, "Can you take us to an alleyway in Radiant Garden?"

"But I'm really tired..." Chou whines, "Can't we just walk to town?"

"Chou," Kiko explains, "There aren't exactly a whole lot of Feylinus walking around, are there? When Riku brought you to town, did you disguise yourself?"

"Yes..." Chou answers, looking away nostalgically.

"Besides," Kiko continues, "I have to imagine this place is off-limits. We can't exactly just walk out the front without raising suspicion, can w-"

**

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**

And once again, Kiko finds herself lying on her back. Well, at least this time isn't too bad: she at least still has a coherent memory. Popping her eyes open, she finds herself in, well, an alleyway. A very narrow one with only a small slit between the two roofs allowing sunlight and lots of boxes arranged haphazardly; the perfect hiding place. Chou really came out on top with this one and it seems she's already hiding in a nook created by some crates. Smart girl.

"Thank you," Kiko says, jumping onto her feet with no real problem. She isn't quite sure why this doesn't feel nearly as bad... perhaps it's the distance? After all, this was only about fifteen kilometers or so as opposed to countless light years...

"Your welcome," Chou responds, motioning Kiko over, "I need more food."

"Here you go," Kiko says as she drags the duffel bag over, unloading all of her pockets and handing the food over. Why bother holding onto all of them, anyway? It's not like she's a goldfish or anything.

"Why did you want to come here?" Chou says, weakly digging into a new meal, "I don't get it."

"We don't have a ship," Kiko answers, "We need to make a phone call and..."

"...and?" Chou asks, more exasperated than annoyed.

"...crap," Kiko says, the most simplistic logic hitting her, "We don't have any money."

"Why didn't you just pick some up while we were at the Academy?" Chou asks.

"Oh, trust me," Kiko retorts, "The way that place was ransacked, there wasn't a penny to be found... I need you to stay here and protect my stuff. I'll be right back."

"Protect it with what?" Chou asks as Kiko takes a few steps away.

"With your pink mitochondria fists or something," Kiko responds, turning her torso without moving her feet, "I'll be right back in fifteen or so."

Kiko walks out of the narrow alleyway, emerging in the dockside fish markets of the city. Well, consistent with the day so far, something so mundane as making a phone call might prove harder than the rest of the mission. Figures. What to do, what to do... maybe she can go to the police station and ask to see Leon? He'd probably arrange a phone call and... no. No no no. Way too conspicuous and there's no reason to believe this place hasn't decided to opt out of coalition. Besides, given that it's a police station, there's a chance they might monitor the call... no. No good. Need a better idea...

...perhaps she could pawn off some stuff? She doesn't even have to think hard on that to realize that all she has are custom firearms by Uina and that would raise suspicion. It's really a shame she left her DCCU card in her apartment instead of just taking it along with her ID card. This would all be so much easier if she had only thought of the possibility she wouldn't be returning to the academy...

...well, there's still the idea of just pickpocketing some phone money. It's really regrettable that she has to stoop that low, but it makes the most sense. She's a trained assassin, with very good observation skills, hand-eye coordination, stealth movement, and more than enough speed and acrobatic ability should she be caught. Sure, it really bugs her that she's going to have to steal from some innocent person, but does she really have any choice? Perhaps she can just grab the cash and put the wallet back empty... yeah, that's the way to go.

Confident in her path, Kiko starts down the streets in search of a mark. Appears to be mid-day, with the crowds relatively thin and spread apart. Not exactly ideal conditions for an easy swipe; she needs lots of people bumping into each other and plenty of movement to disguise the one getting away. Perhaps she can go into a bar and grab the wallet from... no. She's underage and they'll card her at the entrance. Besides, it seems to still be within work hours. Hmm...

Suddenly, the familiar sea breeze brings her all the way back to her first day in this universe: Scrooge's place. There's always a long line there and it's situated near a stairway and a bunch of alleys one level below. It's perfect. Kiko looks around a little to get her orientation back, the memories rushing back. It's not that hard to find this place. Just need to go past these fish stands, down these stairs, across this courtyard, up these stairs, and voila.

It must be a really slow day because there are only about six people in line. Well, at least that puts her under the canopy. No prying eyes from above to spot her... oh, who is she kidding? Civilians are too apathetic to call the police for a pickpocket. She casually moseys in behind the last guy in line: some executive in a power suit talking about this and that business deal with his cell phone practically glued to his ear. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. Now she just needs to figure out which of these two bulging pockets is the wallet...

"...yeah, so I have Nakatomi on the other line..." the business man drones, pulling out a PDA from his left coat pocket and expertly thumbing something on the screen. How polite of him to save her the effort. Well, there are still four people ahead in line, so she better hurry. Here goes...

"...no, you tell them they're dead wrong about the commodities market," the man drones, not even flinching as Kiko deftfully fishes out his wallet, "Daeh is scooping up all the bio-med supplies they can get their filthy talons on. Way, way, way, _way_ more than their army needs. They have something planned and dammit, I want in on the ground floor..."

Breathing a silent sigh of relief, Kiko opens up the bulky wallet and starts thumbing through the contents. Cards, cards, cards, some photos, more cards... okay, here's the petty cash. This guy certainly isn't all talk because he has about 20,000 munny in several denominations. Now, how much to take... a hundred should more than cover it. Kiko stuffs the five twenties in her chest pocket, moving in to put the wallet back in its proper place. So fortunate he was so loaded because it lessens the chance he'll notice the absence of a measly hundred...

"...order for all localized anesthesia types, stat..." the man continues, Kiko stealthfully maneuvering the wallet back into his pocket, "Hangononesecond-"

With a shockingly agile motion, the man stuffs his phone into a chest pocket and grabs Kiko's hand in one single, sweeping motion. He stuffs the PDA back and turns around, a furious expression on his bespectacled face. Uh, oh...

"Excuse me, miss," the man says as he grips deeper into her wrist, stern and cross, "Who the hell are you?"

"Er..." Kiko stalls, not expecting that question at all. What is he talking about...

"You obviously must be somebody important if you're staking a claim on my wallet," the man supplies for her, "Tell me: who, the _hell_, are you?"

"I only took a hundred and it's for a good cause," Kiko blurts out, faking some tears in her eyes, "I nee-"

"You _already stole from me?_" the man nearly shouts, fishing his wallet out and checking inside, "...my twenties!"

"It's really impo-" Kiko attempts, wincing as he yanks her in by the wrist and stuffs a hand into one of her pants pockets. How crass...

"HAND IT OVER!" the man shouts, hastily scraping his hand across her pants to the next pocket. For some reason, Kiko loses all sympathy at that very moment. Perhaps it's his overreaction or how he just unwittingly touched her in her no-no place, but she's not going to let him continue this. All it takes is a simple reversal to break his grip, with a follow-up grapple and over-the-shoulder somersault slamming him expensive-suit-first into the pavement. With several other civilians now looking upon the two very intently, Kiko makes a run for it.

"IT'S FOR A GOOD CAUSE, I SWEAR!" Kiko shouts behind her, leaping off the side of the platform and diving straight into the narrow alleyways. Well, that... went about as well as she expected. At least she picked up the dosh necessary to make a phone call... okay, now what? She has the money, but where can she make this phone call. Come on... think, think, think...

After a couple city blocks, Kiko emerges back out into the streets with as nonchalant a face as she can manage. No real point staying in the shadows; this isn't exactly a police state with cameras on every corner monitoring the citizens... is it? Well, if it is, she'd be screwed anyway.

Gazing down either end of the street reveals lots of social places, with restaurants and pubs and such. Must be out of the bay zone because there's plenty of vehicular traffic. One place that catches her eye is some night club called Solar Eclipse... well, even if they don't let her use their phone, she can at least get directions to a place that will. Just need to walk past this woman in a tuxedo and dark sunglasses...

"Hey, Miss," the woman says, unfolding her arm out to block, "Members only."

"I just need to use a phone," Kiko says.

"You're not using our phone, punk," the woman responds, making a shooing motion with her hand, "Get. Get."

"Do you know where I can make a phone call, then?" Kiko asks.

"Commo Café is across the street," the woman coldly replies, pointing over Kiko's shoulder. How polite.

"Thanks," Kiko says, turning to face this place called, well, Commo Café. Outside of a cutesy, amateurish looking sign in some Comic Sans imitation, it's just a regular old white building with a whole lot of thick wires and antennas around it. Really low-rent, but what other option does she have?

"Bloody blind tourist," the woman mutters under her breath as Kiko heads off, deftfully weaving through the cars. Kind of miffs her to be treated so harshly, but what can she say? This is exactly the place she needs. Heading through the flimsy screen door, she finds about two dozen computers with web cameras, headphones, and microphones. All of them run some cheap text-scrolling screensaver just merely repeating 'Commo Café' over and over and over and over... this could get annoying to look at. Some rather dumpy guy in jeans and a tank top sits with his feet up on the counter and his head buried in some tech magazine. Well, here goes...

"I need to make a phone call," Kiko says, direct and to the point.

"Don't we all?" the man says, not even looking up from his magazine, "Just go to a machine and use it. They're all self-pay."

"...I don't know what I'm doing..." Kiko admits, looking around at the cheap computers. The man tilts his magazine over, looking into her eyes with kind of an elitist expression. Somebody surprised that anybody could ever mutter such words.

"Newb, huh?" the man sighs, tossing the magazine into a nearby pile and rising out of his seat, "What kind of phone call are you making?"

"Er..." Kiko stalls, fishing out her card, "...it says Susanoo off-"

"Amaterasu, huh?" the man cuts off in a whisper with shifty eyes, walking around the counter, "Follow me."

The lower-class man leads Kiko around the myriad computers, bringing her to a cluster of solid state machines way more advanced than the beige desktops. They all have apparently-soundproofed glass privacy doors and a big logo saying 'Belnajor TelCom ISC'. Way, way better.

"Self-pay?" Kiko asks, motioning at one of the fancy machines.

"Yep," the man says with a smirk making its way onto his face. What's his problem?

"Thank you," Kiko says, attempting to go in the booth but finding her way blocked by the man's arm. Kind of rude, but it's his place, after all.

"Of course..." the man says with a crap-eating grin, walking his fingers down Kiko's arm, "We both know that Amaterasu adopted the anti-coalition iron curtain that blue and white recently ordered, so there's no _official_ way to get a call through... you have to make... ahem... _special_ arrange-"

Not putting up with crap like this, Kiko smacks the guy's hand away and slams him against the booth door by his collar. To quote that businessman from earlier: who the hell does he think he is?

"Ooh, I like it rough," the man says, chuckling demurely.

"No," Kiko responds, "Keep your filthy hands off me."

"But-" the man attempts.

"Here's 100 munny," Kiko says, pulling out the wad of cash, "How about I pay you this and I can make up the difference by not smashing your face in, hmm?"

She isn't quite confident in her threat, but what else can she do? If this guy is correct, she's probably pretty lucky she didn't walk into a more reputable place and get kicked out or even arrested. At this point, she's just going by that old saying: in for a penny, in for a pound. No point stopping at 'mere' pick-pocketing.

"I like your style," the man chuckles as Kiko lets him back down, heading into the booth and removing a panel to work on its wiring, "100 munny buys you 10 minutes. Any more than that and I'll have to agree that my face is worth less. Not that the signal costs so much, but any longer and the sysops tend to catch on. Let me get you set up."

"Thank you," Kiko sighs, already getting tired of all this jerking around the world seems to be putting her through today. At least now she'll have her damn phone call and get back on track with saving the universe. Holy crap, it sucks not to be part of an official military organization any more...

"We're hooked up," the seedy man announces, still crouched on his knees and messing with stuff as he reaches his hand back, "Number?"

"Oh..." Kiko responds, walking inside and handing the card over to him. He pauses for a few seconds before continuing on.

"Going for the trifecta, huh?" the man comments, tossing the card back out, "Asking with a strong arm for a call past the iron curtain to the private line of a corporation owned by a known fugitive. You really _are_ a newb, huh? Handing me labeled business cards, Miss 'Queen of the Stone Age'? Don't worry, it's okay; I'm cool. I'm connected. Omertà and all that, you know?"

"I'm not a gangster," Kiko replies, kind of surprised she remembers that word for whatever reason. The man crosses one final wire that spurs the system into action.

"Don't ask, don't tell," the man comments, walking out of the booth and standing sentry right outside. She'd be worried about him overhearing this conversation, but it really must be soundproofed since the constant din of vehicles and pedestrians cuts off with the door sliding shut. Kiko takes a seat and watches as the screen shows some kind of fancy animatic. 'Connection in progress...'

"Hello," says a friendly voice as the screen changes to say 'no image available', "This is Simon Le Bon's personal secretary. While we appreciate your call, he is unavailable at the moment. Do you want me to transfer you to current acting CEO Nicholas James?"

"I need to talk with Simon," Kiko says, ignoring her statement, "Put him on the line."

"Simon is unavailable right now," the female voice responds, "He is-"

"He's not unavailable," Kiko reasserts, "Put him on."

"I don't know if you've been watching the news lately..." the voice continues, politeness fading, "But Mr. Le Bon broke out of jail and fled from the planet. He's most certainly not available right now."

"I know you're just covering for him," Kiko insists, "I _need_ to talk with him. He's-"

"Are you _deaf_, miss?" the female voice interrupts, now openly hostile, "Let me put this in words you can understand: Simon. Is. Not-"

"No, _you_ listen here," Kiko cuts off, strong and assertive, "I know Riku somehow gets to Simon, so stop lying to me. Tell Simon his queen of the stone age is calling. Tell Simon that Paul McCartney is calling. Tell Simon that Alice Cooper is calling. Tell Simon..."

Kiko trails off as two soft beeps and a message saying 'connection terminated' confirm the obvious: that woman hung up on her. What a shrew... well, it's entirely possible she genuinely doesn't know what the hell Kiko was talking about. Riku must have used some other method... back to the drawing board again.

Just as Kiko rises out of her seat, a few more soft tones and a screen saying 'incoming call' plant her right back down. Curious... takes her a second to find the nearby button to accept the call. Not only does the screen say 'no image available', but now it says 'unknown caller' as well. Neat.

"Kiko?" says a heavily distorted, incredibly low-pitched voice. Obviously masked.

"Yes?" Kiko responds, her mood climbing back up. It must be him because she made a point not to say her real name... well, relatively real name.

"You're at Commo Café?" the voice asks.

"Yes," Kiko replies.

"Any companions?" the voice continues.

"One," Kiko answers, "She's a Feylinus, so she can't-"

"Within ten minutes," the voice commands, "Go outside, grab a paper, and walk down the block to 204N, around the corner to 14E, back down to 202, across to 12, and repeat as many times as necessary. A man in an unmarked white van will make a gun gesture to you. When he does, walk in the closest alley on your side of the street and let him pick you up. You can then direct him to your companion. Do you understand these directions?"

"Ye-" Kiko says, not even getting a chance to finish the word before the connection goes dead with those familiar two beeps. Well, there's her lead. Not going to get any better than this. She gets up and heads through the sliding door, the man making some kind of simplistic wave as she passes by.

"May you find what you are looking for," the man chuckles, Kiko not even bothering to say anything in return. Screw that guy; he's absolutely bloody nobody. Emerging back out, she checks around for the street signs. Appears she's near the corner of 196N and 3E... okay, she really needs to hurry, but not look too suspicious in the process. Picking up a free newspaper for the homeless from a nearby dispenser, she pretends to read some article about the new shelter legislation as she speed-walks right along. Nothing to see here, more along...

After a little under ten minutes, she reaches her destination to find... about three dozen white vans. Awesome. Just friggin' awesome. It does make sense since this appears to be the start of the warehouse district, but that doesn't make it any less a pain in the ass to find her ride. Well, here goes. Watching the vans from the corner of her eye, she starts down the road. Over to 204, around, down to 14, around, towards 202...

Okay, this must be the guy. Looking straight into her eyes, he makes a gun with two fingers and does an exaggerated silent 'pow' with his mouth as he pops his thumb down like a hammer. Definitely a gun gesture. Following the directions exactly, Kiko swerves into the nearby alley and walks a good ways in before coming to a stop. Just as expected, the van drives right in and stops beside her, the side door sliding open to reveal some generic worker in trucker clothes.

"Hello, Alice..." the man says, pausing a second, "...what's your last name, again?"

"Cooper," Kiko finishes. Clever...

"Get in," the man orders, sitting back down in the driver's seat as Kiko steps in and takes a seat on the rear bench. Well, she certainly did a boffo job of setting up her very own black operation. Sure, she blindly stumbled around into it, but now, she's guilty of theft, battery, communication system hacking, bypassing an interstellar regulation, and now she's with some shady guy about to smuggle her and an unregistered Feylinus off the planet and to some restricted area... maybe she really does quality as a gangster after all?

"Where's your companion?" the man asks, curt and to the point as he starts heading out of the alley.

"She's... um..." Kiko strains, trying to think of how to translate her visual memory, "...you know Scrooge's ice cream place?"

"The docks," the man sighs, making a U-turn, "You want me to go to the bloody docks."

"Well..." Kiko trails off, the man picking up a cell phone and dialing some stuff in.

"Hey," the man says into the phone, "Your favorite customer here. I need a dock loading permit... client will pay... thank you."

"Er..." Kiko says, "I was going to suggest we just get a raincoat and lead her to the closest road possible."

"Client said to hurry as fast as possible," the man responds, "No expense spared. Now, where in the docks is she?"

"You know the fish markets?" Kiko asks.

"I've been there a few times," the man responds, "Any more details?"

"I walked from an alley to the fish market," Kiko explains, "Then down the street, down some stairs, across a courty-"

"Hold on," the man interrupts, coming to a stop by a gated checkpoint and rolling his window down, "Universal Shipping here to pick up fourteen crates on behalf of JSE incorporated."

"Sure thing, sir," a man in a security uniform responds, heading back into his little booth. Kiko would try to get a better view, but she's not quite sure if she should risk it. Better to just follow the implicit directions and pretend she's an illegal immigrant... which she kind of is. The security guy eventually comes back after a few minutes, flipping through a clipboard of paper and cardboard.

"I don't see Universal Shipping on today's docket..." the security guy falsely claims, the driver discreetly slipping him a big wad of munny, "...ah, here it is. Okay, sir, you're good to go."

"Thank you," the driver sarcastically quips, taking the placard and hanging it on the rear view mirror. Doesn't even take five seconds before the red and white pole gate lifts up, the man continuing his drive at a significantly slower pace. Kind of annoying how the pedestrians walk head on and don't move out of the way until they're practically touching the front bumper, but what can she do about it? At least they don't seem to have to go far, already passing by Scrooge's place. Almost there...

"Which alleyway?" the man asks, turning around to the fish market. Kiko decides now is as good a time as any to get out of her seat, going up front and standing next to the driver.

"Keep going..." Kiko says, carefully scanning each little bit of the area, "...little further... okay, that one."

Wordlessly, the man comes to a pretty harsh stop with tires squealing. Kiko almost bumps her head against the dashboard as the momentum launches her forward. How rude.

"What are you waiting for?" the man asks. Kiko can't say she's going to miss him when she's done with all of this, but meh. She slides open the side door and heads into the alley, moving past the boxes to find... Chou and the bag still there. What a relief. Sure, Chou is a little more pale than when she left her, but is there much she can do about it? She can sleep it off on the way to Olympus Valley.

"Hey, Chou," Kiko greets, "We need to get going."

"I don't feel so great..." Chou says, breathing deeply through her mouth.

"I can carry you," Kiko offers, "Come on... just thirty meters to the van and you can lie down inside."

"...okay," Chou says, holding her limp arms out. Wow... this must be serious after all. Kiko gently hoists Chou onto her back, picking up her duffel bag and piggy-backing all the way over to the van. She barely even gets a chance to set Chou down on the bench before the man starts driving, the side door slamming shut with a deliberate harsh brake. He seriously can't wait even two seconds?

"Where are we going now?" Kiko asks, crouching down onto the floor. They must be traveling pretty fast because they're already at a checkpoint gate... probably just taking a different exit.

"Client has a cargo ship on standby," the man answers, waving to a guard as he drives through the gate, "He'll take it from there."

"Thank you very much," Kiko says upon deaf ears, pulling the bag over and unzipping it. It's really a shame she had to rush the packing so fast because thinking back on it, she could have picked up Twilight's Javelin. Sure, she'd rather not end up in a situation that calls for such a dire weapon in the first place, but this is a prism she's going after. It probably has a whole battalion of Lightside to block... well, at least she still has some good stuff. She might have forgotten to pick up ammo for the stubby SMG, but with a hybrid assault/sniper rifle, an automatic shotgun, four handguns, a belt of grenades, and her two trusty knives, she's pretty covered.

A glance up reveals a familiar sight in the distance. None other than the castle that once hosted the Radiant Garden Academy... burnt out, windows shattered, and with one of the towers completely collapsed over its side. Wow... what the hell happened? It's one thing for a mob to recklessly grab and smash the entire place, but to take down a thirty story tower in the process? Either this was the mob to end all mobs or the national guard decided to respond with extreme prejudice...

"What hap-" Kiko attempts.

"No small talk," the driver cuts off, "Client pays me too much for me to listen and not enough for me to care."

"...okay..." Kiko mutters. Killjoy. Well, she better tend to Chou's needs. Sure, she can't really do anything, but lending a kind hand often does wonders for the sick.

"What's wrong, Chou?" Kiko asks in a soft whisper.

"Pyrmaolindr hurts so much..." Chou responds, gagging a little as some pink drool escapes her mouth.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Kiko offers.

"I'm fine," Chou answers, closing her eyes, "Just... stay by my side and let me sleep it off."

"...okay," Kiko responds, turning back to the front of the van. Looks like they're at the airport... spaceport already, the van stopped at a checkpoint. If there's one thing that she can appreciate about Radiant Garden, it's the size. She always heard of it having a really strict immigration system and judging by how small this main city is along with the sheer amount of undeveloped land only a few kilometers away, it must be intentional. They're probably aiming to be a simple port planet and act as a hub for directing traffic across the galaxy.

Well, no real time to think about it now. Through the gate the van goes, merging onto the service roads alongside the great many other vans, trucks, and shuttle buses. Lots of people and cargo being shuffled around. The traffic thins out the further away the van gets from the commercial areas, passing by lots of military stuff branded with the Daeh Yeo Mar icon... huh. Occupation forces, perhaps? Or are they just using this as an allied port... well, she didn't see any Yeo out in the town, so probably just the latter. Surely, the empire didn't decide to actually live up to those dire claims of that screaming guy on the television...

With the last military ship long out of sight, the van drives solitary on this service road to a lonesome cargo ship. For as little as she thinks of Uina's ship, this one makes it look like some technological marvel... which is probably is, but certainly doesn't look the part. This ship seems to be made of some yellow metal, rivets visible and rust creeping in at the bolts. The engines kind of look like they belong on a 1940s Ford rather than anything that can fly. Seeming way too bulky and yet way too confined at the same time, it's a far step down from the Coalition.

"We're here," the man says, stopping just short of the ramp, "Get out."

"Okay..." Kiko sighs, turning back to find Chou fast asleep. Not really a healthy sleep, but one of a general malaise. She only hopes everything will be okay. Slinging the duffel bag over her shoulder, she gently lifts the pink alien with both arms and elbows the sliding door open. She barely even takes a step out of the van before the driver zooms off, the bag knocked aside and nearly staggering her off her feet. Well, that guy certainly was rude to the end... well, that's what she gets from dealing with smugglers and other lowlifes.

Walking up the ramp reveals exactly the same stuff she saw in her vision. A wall of guitars featuring artful vandalism, lots of audio equipment, and a great many monochrome poster of skinny shirtless guys screaming into microphones as bands play behind them. Standing in the middle of this living space is none other than Simon Le Bon, record executive extraordinaire, with his hair teased up and a scrappy punk outfit to boot. The only thing conflicting with his studded leather jacket and tight jeans is a pair of wide shades.

"Well, if it isn't my very own queen of the stone age," Simon says, taking off his sunglasses and flipping them into his chest pocket, "Welcome aboard the _Holiday in Cambodia_."


	73. Collateral Damage? What's That?

_Look out, honey, 'cause I'm using technology,  
__Ain't got time to make no apology.  
Soul radiation in the dead of night.  
Love in the middle of a fire fight._

So blares a rather crude, loud song over the speakers of this space ship. Harsh distortion, clipping, static... just like in the vision. In fact, exactly like her vision. It's always kind of weird to witness the same prophesied events from a new perspective; kind of like deja vu, but not. Well, there is one key difference: Kiko not nearly as intolerant of this music as Riku and while he might be able to demand it shut off, she would rather not get on Simon's nerves. She's just going to sit back, relax, and let the man in the studded leather jacket grasp at his fleeting youth...

...and yet, Simon still turns it off with a silent pull of the remote. Takes a second for Kiko to notice him eying Chou as she wobbles her head around in a daze.

"Sorry about that," Simon apologizes, "I guess I should think about the friendly fire when I get into my 'music as a weapon' mind. You'll forgive me, won't you?"

"...huh?" Chou mutters, snapping back to attention. Kiko shrugs her shoulders as she resumes her stare into the wall. She needs to think long and hard about how she's going to pull this off. All she knows is that somewhere in Olympus Valley, there's a temple with a prism. Where is it... wait a second...

"Simon?" Kiko opens, the realization of the stupidity of this plan finally hitting her.

"Yes?" Simon responds.

"Stop the ship," Kiko says, "Keep us in orbit."

"Sure thing," Simon says with a shrug, turning towards the flight deck door, "Yo, Jamo; hold us in orbit."

"Yes, sir!" the pilot known only as Jamo responds.

"What's up?" Simon asks, his attention back on Kiko.

"I didn't think this plan out very well," Kiko admits.

"Gee, I never figured that out," Simon says with a roll of the eyes, "You must have read my mind because I was going to-"

"Have us stop until I cut out this secret agent crap," Kiko interrupts.

"Took the words right out of my mouth," Simon dryly comments.

"I had a vision," Kiko explains, "Riku was here instead of me. After explaining that he had a fake vision from Yen Sid telling him to go to Olympus Valley, the ship was shot down more than a thousand kilometers away from the drop zone. Jamo died, you died, Chou died, Riku lost himself to the darkness, and Mint extracted Riku's keyblade."

"We were going to party hard, huh?" Simon weakly chuckles, "Well, now what?"

"I can't believe I'm so stupid," Kiko admits, staring into the floor, "Why the hell did I ever think there was a prism here?"

_Because there is._

"...how do you know that?" Kiko asks.

"Wha?" Simon says in mild surprise, stepping back a little, "I was just uncomfortably watching you angst."

_You are better than this and you know it._

"...crap," Kiko comments, "It's getting worse."

"What's getting worse," Simon asks.

_Go to 68.9 by 166.3 and drop with the Feylinus in an escape pod. Do it._

"...nothing," Kiko says, "Take us to 68.9 by 166.3, ready an escape pod."

"You're kind of drifting from Joan Jett-style awesome-crazy over to Wendy O. Williams crazy-crazy," Simon sighs, "Look, we're-"

"Coordinates check out, sir," Jamo inadvertently interrupts, "Smack dab over an uncharted limestone temple of some kind. Definitely not Olympian."

"Brain bug?" Simon asks.

"Yeah..." Kiko admits.

"Sorry, but I'm going to have to start harshing your cool now," Simon comments, "Do you know what's in that temple?"

"If it's like the others," Kiko starts, "There's a bunch of corridors leading into a center dome room. There's an altar with a prism and a lot of Lightside Heartless guarding it."

"Lightside?" Simon asks.

"They're basically just Heartless, but made of light instead of darkness," Kiko explains, "They really like the prisms for some reason."

"What are these 'prisms'?" Simon asks.

"Er..." Kiko stalls, thinking of a way to describe this, "...they're the keys to the... thing keeping the girl in black... ancient destroyer from awakening... or something."

"So she's kind of like Kuromeru Reifujin?" Simon asks.

"She is Ku-ro-me-ru Rei-fu-jin," Kiko says, carefully pronouncing each syllable, "Mickey even called her that."

"And I always thought she was just the Amaterasu bogeywoman..." Simon shrugs, "I assume she's the brain bug? What's she like?"

_Tell him I'm awesome._

"I'd rather not talk about her..." Kiko sighs, "I just... I don't know what I'm doing any more."

"...well, in for a penny, in for a pound, eh?" Simon comments, turning back to the flight deck door, "Take us in, Jamo."

"Yes, sir!" the pilot calls out.

"Wait, what are you doing?" Kiko protests, rising out of her seat.

"You might want to sit back down," Simon suggests, walking to a chair just beside Kiko's, "This might be a little rough."

""We're going to be shot down!" Kiko continues, reluctantly taking her seat and strapping herself in.

"Yo, Jamoooooo," Simon calls out, "Tour of duty, please."

"Four years Mirage Falcons, seventeen years UCoP Security," Jamo recites, "112 missions. 46 cold transport, 22 hot transport, 44 bombing. 2206 military flight hours total."

"How many times have you been shot down?" Simon asks.

"Zero!" Jamo proudly declares.

"I think we'll be just fine," Simon says, reclining with his arms behind his head. Looks like there's pretty much nothing Kiko can do but ride this out. Who knows... maybe the simple act of redirecting away from the path back into orbit will throw off the trail? Or perhaps the ship got shot down due to a lucky shot that is unlikely to happen now? At least she now knows of the escape pods and could probably use one as a temporary refuge while Chou charges up her teleport...

"So..." Simon says out of the blue, "What's your favorite punk song?"

"Huh?" Kiko says, not quite catching that.

"I'm partial to the Buzzcocks myself," Simon continues, "Maybe they're not the public's first choice, but you know how it is. The best music for anything is the stuff just below the radio darlings. Used to be The Clash, but I got sick of them after hearing 'London Calling' on the radio for the billionth time."

"I really have no clue what you're talking about..." Kiko sighs, "...isn't that the song with 'phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust'?"

"'Come out of the cupboard, you boys and girls'," Simon says.

"'You know what they said?'" Kiko calls.

"'Well, some of it was true!'" Simon responds, "Ever try singing?"

"...no?" Kiko says, squinting an eye at the man. Blind flattery...

"Sing me a punk song from your generation," Simon says, "You don't have to be very good at it or anything. I just need a seed."

"...I only kind of remember the words to one song," Kiko continues, "Jamie... my friend used to play it all the time. I always thought it was emo, but she would keep saying 'it's not emo, it's punk' to anyone that tried to tell her otherwise."

"Emotional hardcore?" Simon asks, "That's punk. Lay it on me, Wendy O."

"Er..." Kiko says, thinking hard, "...something something something. 'Did you get what you deserve? The ending of your life. Something something something then your life can't wait, you're dead. Have you heard the news that you're dead? No one ever had much nice to say-"

"I think they never liked you anyway," Simon cuts in with a defiant yell, his voice contorted a bit higher than usual, "Oh taaaaake me from the hospital bed. Wouldn't it be grand, it ain't exactly what you planned, and wouldn't it be great if we. Were. _Dead_?"

"...you've heard that song before?" Kiko asks.

"Nope," Simon responds, "It's just a perk of my chosen powers. It's a fun song, but it lacks a certain... finesse. Your friend is right, though; it's not emo. Punk, yes, emo, no. Come on, hit me with another one."

"...I think Avril Lavigne is punk..." Kiko starts, "...but I hate her guts. Er... all the... small things... I don't... know words. Um... I am an arms dealer, something something... this ain't a scene, it's a god. Damn. Arms. Race? Nah... girls don't like boys, girls like cars and money..."

"That sounds just a little sarcastic," Simon dryly comments, "Of course, as we all know, every girl's crazy for a sharp dressed man. Come on, there has to be something else you remember."

"I think I remember somebody calling AFI punk..." Kiko rambles, "Um... what follows... me as the whitest light will swall-ow whole-"

"Just begs to be imbued," Simon continues, voice somber, "What folloooooows... has led me to this place where I belooooong... with all eraaaaaaaased... not punk."

"Eh..." Kiko shrugs, "What was that other one they did... hey, Miss Murder, can I... don't know the words. May I stop, please?"

"You don't have to force yourself for me," Simon says, "I'm just kind of burnt out on the music I brought with me, you know? Local acts got no talent."

"...I used to have some CDs from the early nineties back at the Academy," Kiko says, "But the battery ran out and I didn't feel like asking Uina to do something about it. Not like anything but 'Plush' and 'Alive' was any good."

"I'll pay you a million munny for each of those and five for the player," Simon responds, "Straight cash, off the books."

"I don't think they're still there," Kiko explains, "The castle got trashed and looted pretty good."

"Eh... shame, isn't it?" Simon comments.

"Uncharted temple comin' up in one minute," Jamo calls out.

"Well, then," Simon says, "Wendy O., Patti Smith; you guys ready?"

"Patti... oh," Kiko says, glancing over to Chou. She certainly doesn't look too chipper... in fact, whatever is eating away at her seems to be getting worse. Even though she forces herself upright and sort of alert, her pale skin and wobbly head betray a certain malaise. Not like there's really much that can be done about it. She already ate all the food she had and won't say what's happening. Maybe she doesn't know?

With a soft thud, the ship plants itself on solid ground. Wait a second... it was that easy? Just land right at the doorstop? Either Jamo is incredibly audacious or there's nobody here yet... maybe Maleficent and company were always waiting at that one mountain?

"How's it looking out there, my man?" Simon asks.

"Blue skies, green valleys, and not a single hostile within a thousand kiloms," Jamo responds.

"How do you want to work this, Kiko?" Simon asks, rising out of his seat and starting towards his musical equipment, "If you cover the ship, I can go get this-"

_No._

"No, I'll do it," Kiko says, blinking in surprise. Why is she taking suggestions from that voice on a knee-jerk basis now?

"Are you sure?" Simon asks, "I may not look the part, but I'm a war veteran and all."

"I'll be fine," Kiko insists, figuring that it's better to have complete control.

"Anything you think I should know before we go in?" Simon asks. Now that she thinks of it...

"There's a girl in a green dress," Kiko explains, "She's really strong, kind of pissy, and in my vision, she killed you in less than ten seconds. Try to stay away from her."

"I'll take it under advisement," Simon says with a smile and thumbs up. Well, it's not like she didn't warn him...

"Are you okay, Chou?" Kiko asks, walking over to her duffel bag.

"I'm okay," Chou says, rising out of her seat, "Just okay. What do you need?"

"I need you to wait at the entrance," Kiko outlines, "If something goes wrong, I need you to shift me back to Twilight Town, okay?"

"Okay..." Chou responds, wary, "Why can't I go with you?"

"I can tell you're still sick," Kiko answers, fishing out the shotgun and two handguns, "Ever get any gun training?"

"No," Chou admits, walking over beside Kiko, "Guns bother me."

"...okay..." Kiko sighs. There's just something fundamentally wrong about a support medic in a fully-developed military having any predilection against guns. Well, what can she really do about it?

It's a good thing that even with rushing through the quartermaster process, Kiko still has more than a fair share of firearms to go around. Even with the SMG fundamentally useless, she still has enough to spare a few to the pink alien. May as well give the crappy weapons to Chou anyway in case something comes up. Bothered or not, it's better to know she has some kind of protection should desperation overcome irrationality.

"Even though guns bother you," Kiko starts, setting up the holsters for the shotgun and two handguns on a bandolier, "I still need you to carry these, please. For me."

"I'll do it," Chou accepts, apparently unwilling to reject any request based on moral quandary. Whatever. Easier not to spend any time convincing her to do stuff. With a trio of guns awkwardly hanging off Chou's chest, Kiko starts the usual arming process. Two knives above the tailbone, two pistols and their clips at the hips, a gigantic rifle strapped to the back, a second belt of orb grenades around her stomach, and a bandolier of large ammo magazines. She only hopes she doesn't do something stupid given that she never got any explosives training, but how hard can it really be?

"Lookin' dangerous," Simon comments with a thumbs up, "I approve."

"Thanks... I guess," Kiko shrugs, starting her preliminary combat stretches.

"Jamo!" Simon calls out, "Drop the door!"

Without any resistance whatsoever, the rear ramp flips right down with a metal-on-dirt puff. Funny how things work so much better when one doesn't crash the ship. Well, the point of no return was way back when she first shifted away from Twilight Town, so this is only the point of absolute, most definite no return. Slamming an assault rifle clip into her combo-gun and loading the chamber, Kiko starts a deliberate walk down the ramp with a pink alien wearing boys' clothes strapped with guns on one side and a grown man in punk clothes with a guitar and amplifier backpack on the other. Just like the movies... sort of.

Just as expected, there's a big limestone temple right outside. The local scenery really takes her by surprise given how her vision involved mountains and marble ruins, but then again, that was 'over a thousand kilometers away'. Instead, there are green fields and flowing streams all around. The full panoramic view shows everything gradually tapering downwards, with small slopes on three sides and an absolutely gigantic mountain on the fourth. Towering to staggering heights, it has a perpetual thunderstorm with lightning flashes revealing glimpses of marble pillars... huh...

Well, no point in admiring the mountain: the real goal is right ahead. All the streams of water flow right into this limestone temple, a constant white mist emanating from every last crack. What is the deal with these places and water, anyway... in fact, how did that temple on Zima work if all it had was ice? Perhaps it had intricate geothermal furnaces working to melt the ice or some other overly technical extrapolation; she'll never know. Still, three out of four temples show a fondness for water.

With the group now standing outside what appears to be the front door, Kiko turns to face her two companions. Looks like Simon has already taken his leave to start circling the premises, so that just leaves Chou.

"Okay," Kiko starts, "I don't know how your teleport move works or anything, but we need to be able to shift back to Twilight Town if anything goes wrong. How long would it take for you to shift us there?"

"I don't know that place so well..." Chou admits, "Um... a minute?"

"We could be killed twenty times over in one minute," Kiko admonishes, "Is there any way you can speed it up? Can you keep it in mind?"

"Not really," Chou responds.

"Worth a shot," Kiko shrugs, turning back to the entrance, "Let's find you a hiding space."

Undramatically, the two honorary tomb raiders walk inside to find the usual thick greenery covering every surface. Moss, vines, the occasional white flower, and a glistening layer of water everywhere. The usual meter cube cuts of stone break up the flora with etches of runic symbols and what almost appears to be ancient graffiti. If there's one thing that makes the girl in black's whole spiel about the ancient civilization doubtful, it's the design of these temples. This can't possibly be an oppressive regime; why would they be so intent on genocide, but so in tune with nature? It should be emotionless steel, not natural stone. Just a little suspicious...

Luckily, both sides of this hallway feature long-collapsed statues of some kind. Perfect hiding spaces. Kiko leads her companion over to one particularly large pile of rubble, shoving one of the large cubes back so as to create a convenient enclave only visible upon exit. After all, if they get that far in, Kiko is going to have to fight her way past them anyway.

"Wait here," Kiko requests, looking over her combo-rifle out of instinct, "I'll be right back."

Chou simply nods her head wordlessly, casually sitting down in the moss as if it were a cushion. Not too far off from her natural habitat, but then again, she spent the last eight or more months living with humans. She's probably not really in her comfort zone any more... eh, whatever.

Kiko starts her gait into the depths of this temple, weapons at the ready for the inevitable Lightside assault... wait a second. Wouldn't it make more sense to avoid arousing their attention? They only seem to care when they or the prism is threatened, so it makes more sense to walk in unimpeded. Hopefully, a flip of the safety and a strap to the back will be enough to throw off suspicion.

It's just as well she did it before turning the corner because lo and behold, here is a Shimmer scooping its hands through a soft stream. Perhaps a single bottom-feeder like this doesn't give off enough piercing light to be too harsh, but it's still enough to remind Kiko to put the goggles on. The soft crack of the band snapping onto the back of her head seems to be just loud enough to draw attention, the skittish little creature scurrying right in front and staring straight up with its purple doe-eyes. How adorable...

"...hey there, little buddy," Kiko says uncomfortably as she debates attacking first, "Think you could take me to your boss?"

Predictably, this creature just continues its upwards stare without so much as a twitch or peep. Well, what else was she expecting, anyway? A Heartless to suddenly gain a voice? 'I say, my lady, you look dapper in that skin-tight blue military outfit. Simply stunning. The guns and grenades just bring out the natural features of your face that the goggles never could. How about I hand over the prism and you can get out of this temple?' Ha...

All of the sudden, the Shimmer leaps up at Kiko's chest and latches on to her shoulders with its clawed feet. With a yank at the collar, this creature tears off one of the brooch necklaces and backflips off with enough force to launch Kiko onto her back. Prize in hand, the audacious little punk dashes right off towards a corridor and vanishes around a corner. Huh...

"Hey!" Kiko yells, leaping back onto her feet, "What the hell was that?"

As she reaches for a handgun, she realizes something: these things don't have any morality and it's just a brooch. She has four of them left, so why should she really care if it takes a trinket? She still needs to get to the unexplored depths of this structure and giving up her game for a simple necklace is not worth it.

Shrugging her shoulders, she decides this corridor the Shimmer ran down is as good as any. Must be the labyrinth part because all there is to this corridor is a whole lot of limestone. Stone, moss, water; more of the same. Again, how is this the work of an oppressive regime? Corridor after corridor of tree-hugging, nature-loving craftwork only further cements her distrust of this girl in black.

After about half a kilometer of wandering through these narrow hallways, Kiko emerges in... some filler room. While ornately designed, it isn't the altar room and seems to serve no real purpose in this ancient tour. Still, it's a pretty relaxing atrium of sorts. Sunlight filters down through the heavy growth of moss and vines covering the domed ceiling, the flowing water shimmering and sparkling. The collapsed remains of a bunch of statues seem to suggest this as yet another memorial room, complete with runic symbols everywhere. Oh, if only she could read the language...

What seems to be that Shimmer from before is by a bunch of its buddies near a pool or water, showing the brooch off as if it's the greatest thing ever. While two other Shimmers huddle close to the gaudy brass jewelry with eyes centimeters away, a third sneaks up from behind and makes a lunge at it. With the bearer quickly snapping the brooch back to its chest, the thief leaps on top and starts an almost-playful wrestle that rolls the pair across the ground. As the thief finally pins the holder to the ground, the creature yanks its head back and points right at Kiko. Uh, oh...

"Hey, guys..." Kiko mutters as the three new Shimmers scamper over, eyes wide with anticipation as they circle their target. Well, so much for just walking in and out... perhaps this is the end of the easy road? Just pull out the gun and... no. Not yet. There must be a nonviolent way past these three. She's already going to have to fight her way through upwards of a kilometer or two of this glorified tomb; why should she have to fight an extra 25% of the way?

Without any warning, one of the Shimmers leaps up at her chest. Luckily, forearmed with their intent, Kiko simply ducks out of the way. Before she even gets a chance to recover, another leaps onto the side of her shoulder and makes a grab at her collar. With a flash of the hand, Kiko grabs the thief by its wrist and yanks the personal space violator off effortlessly. The leap of the third Shimmer triggers an instinctive reflex, Kiko flinging her improvised living weapon right into its buddy in a rolling ball of shiny meter tall hoodlums... oh, crap, she went too far. Here comes the wave of Lightside fueled destruction to crush Kiko's interloping ass...

...oddly enough, they seem unusually cool about it. Get up, dust off, and scurry back towards her with thieving intentions in their eyes... wait, there's an idea. Kiko fishes one of the brooches out and holds it to her side, the three Shimmers watching it very closely. Just as one of them starts a frenzied dash, Kiko tosses the trinket as far off to the side as possible.

"Fetch," Kiko dryly comments, running towards a random corridor as her newfound buddies all rush the necklace. Well, she just wasted two perfectly good brooches just to get past four Shimmers, but then again, what else was she going to do with them? Kind of impulse grab, anyway.

With those little muggers off her trail, she slows down a little as the hallways darken. Combined with the soft spiral descent of this long corridor, it's only a given she's going into some kind of basement. Yay, powers of deduction. That is just a little worrying because basements make for awful strategic positions. Escape routes are limited, fighting upwards is dangerous, and there's always the risk of compromising the foundation. Still, if this is where the altar is, what can she really do about it?

A bit more of the wide spiral and a few nondescript hallways bring her to the trophy room. Just like the two she saw before, it's a domed arena stretching very far in diameter. Pools of water flowing in from above and pouring out from below circle the altar, appearing as a web of tendrils tapering into nothing. The usual circle surrounds the steps leading up to a meter tall stone pillar and lo, there is the red prism in all its glittery glory.

Of course, getting to it is the real problem here. The usual compliment of Shimmers and Lumines wander around the waters, scooping their claws through and splashing around playfully... well, about as playfully as mindless creatures can, anyway. At least they haven't yet picked up on- oh, here they come. Curious and unprovoked, they keep their distance as they close in on Kiko. Luckily, she knows just the way to distract them and pulls out a brooch, all eyes following the hunk of brass and lapis lazuli.

"You want this, don't you?" Kiko says, maintaining a matched pace backwards as her audience starts spreading into a circle around her. With a sudden twitch, she tosses the trinket onto one of the protruding rocks near a hole trickling water. Just as before, the light-fueled monstrosities practically trip and grapple each other as they rush towards the dangling jewelry. Perfect clear path to the prism now, but there's still the issue of the inevitable large one awaiting a trespasser... well, that's what she has grenades for, isn't it?

With all the opposition bunched together in one convenient pack, Kiko casually plucks a grenade from her belt and flicks out the pin. As if sensing hostile intent merely from that soft click, the pack all turn their heads towards Kiko as some make a low hissing noise. Well, there goes the surprise, but at least they only have about two seconds to do jack about it.

Kiko hurls the metal sphere of incendiary explosives right at the luminescent group, leaping into the nearest pool of water in the process. Just as she belly flops into the miniature lake, a near-blinding flash and deafening boom echos through the acoustic nightmare of this domed, stone room. Anguished cries by the dozen pierce through the resonating reverb, the water torn by stone fragments and the rapidly dissolving corpses of unlucky Lightside. What the hell are in these grenades and why haven't they ever been issued before? Seriously...

Knowing full well that there has to be survivors, Kiko draws both her handguns as she leaps out of the water in a spectacular spray that's probably worthy of an A-list action film. Just as expected, there are about half a dozen Shimmers and one... nay, two Lumines still standing. Luckily, most of them are still disoriented and she merely has to shoot the two leaping Shimmers out of the air to regain her comfort zone. With her other opponents only just barely coming to grips with reality, Kiko sweeps through them all with a barrage that empties both clips just in time for the last Lumine to go crashing back into nothing. Well, that was easy... too easy...

Kiko casually strolls to the altar as she reloads her guns, stuffing the empty clips in an unobtrusive chest pocket. Surely, the reinforcements are going to come crashing in any moment now... probably better to use the combo-rifle for this. Holstering her two handguns, she flings the combo-rifle to the ready. Any second now, there should be a wave of seething, scratching beasts made out of some kind of light-fueled mercury... surely just around the corner now...

...a tense minute of nothing cements the obvious: the other Lightside Heartless in this building must have either missed the call or she somehow did manage to kill off every last one. She's pretty sure the four bickering Shimmers from earlier didn't somehow sneak past her or otherwise get into the pack, so why aren't they coming? For that matter, why were there only four Shimmers so far apart from their pals to begin with? There were swathes of them back on Viesca just outside the front door to battle Maleficent and company.

Wait, that's it: these things must be especially volatile around darkness. Sure, Kiko is not so conceited as to believe she has a 'pure' heart or anything, but she certainly doesn't have tangible darkness the way Riku, Maleficent, Mint, and the Darkside horde do. No wonder there's only the equivalent of a skeleton crew here: they don't sense any darkness that needs eradicating. That's certainly an advantage... right? Right?

Tucking the butt of her combo-rifle into her shoulder for a one-hand grip, she uses the other to lightly touch the red prism. Yep, it's a prism. Upon her apprehensive touch, a low rumble reverberates through the stone floor. Ripples in the pools gradually turn to cascading waves as the tremors grow stronger, the floor in one corner starting to crack at a very slow rate. Must be one hell of a horde stampeding through those halls to cause this much commotion; Kiko only hopes she has enough firepower to take them all on.

The cracks in the corner finally finish their spiderweb pattern linking the various nearby pools, with one violent smash bursting the floor apart in an eruption of stone fragments. A small mound of what appears to be diamond starts rising out of the dirt, the flowing water running up on top of it and solidifying into crystal. Building torrents of water start flooding towards this pile of shiny rocks, starting as waves and eventually turning into a hurricane of mist as the mound reaches the six meter mark. What is going on...

With a set of deliberate cracks, the bottom third snaps apart into two separate pillars forming a V shape to the mound above. Shards of crystal fall off and shatter into nothingness as the two appendages bend at a new joint halfway down, with a final bend at the bottom forming the feet to what are no doubt legs to this crystal monstrosity. The top slab bends forward at what must be the waist, with two more slabs breaking off the sides and quickly forming into arms as they swing forward. One final crack at the top brings what is obviously its head into what appears as a mournful hang; a posture consistent with the rest of the creature. Is it already depressed about life or something?

Knowing better than to take anything for granted, Kiko fishes out a brooch with her free hand and dangles it on her fingertips. If it worked three times so far, why shouldn't it work now? Only takes a few seconds for this new monster to glance upwards, two purple gems adding the finishing touch of eyes to this crystalline behemoth. Standing upright to its full eight meters, it manages to appear both muscular and yet streamlined; perhaps it's the weight of the spiky crystal condensed into the lanky limbs? Regardless, it's still staring at Kiko with a tilted head; just need to seal the deal.

"Fetch," Kiko commands, throwing the brooch off to a side. The thing doesn't so much as even flinch its unimpressed head and without any warning whatsoever, a bright flash crosses Kiko's eyes. Wait a second, what about the gogg- without any warning whatsoever, the diamond beast backhands Kiko clear across the room into a stone wall. Before she even gets a chance to bounce off, the monster rushes in and crushes her head into a fine past all over the intricate masonry. An inexplicable bright flash brings Kiko back to the present.

With no time to wonder about the sudden return of this ability, Kiko leaps backwards just in time to evade this attack. With the creature slightly staggered and Kiko sliding across the ground on her back, she starts spraying bullets into the looming monstrosity with little care for aim. Sadly, even with most of the rounds connecting, half of them barely chip the exterior with their explosions while the other half deflect all over the room. One ricochet proves just a little too close, the burst near Kiko's ear disorienting her with a loud ringing noise that mercifully dies down just as fast. Probably a good thing this marks the end of the clip; certainly takes a few seconds to release the involuntary grip on the trigger.

The crystal giant, unfazed and angry, starts a thomping stroll towards the altar as it punches one fist into the other palm. What to do, what to do... she can't just throw a grenade like this. If they're this powerful, she needs some cover. This thing is already stepping over the altar with great care, so she needs some kind of plan really fast. What to do, what to do... how about that hole from which it emerged? Worth a shot.

Kiko dodges to the side as the hulk pounds downwards, rushing forward towards it and diving over the follow-up sweep. With a somersault through the legs, she leaps back onto her feet and plucks a grenade off her belt. Now the question of whether she should throw it or... oh, wait. The prism. What if she damages the... wait a second; these things are pretty much indestructible. She doesn't need to worry about damaging it; in fact, why not use the grenade to get the prism out of its holder? Kill two birds with one stone as the old cliché goes. Sheer perfection, that's what it is.

With her stunningly brilliant plan set, Kiko carefully places a grenade on the altar and plucks the pin out. She only hopes these have a timer of some sort and aren't exclusively impact-based. Kiko rushes as fast as she can from this stupidly-overpowered explosive, diving straight into the crater left behind by this monster... not nearly deep enough despite the sheer size of the thing it once accommodated. Oh, no...

Just as before, a huge explosion tears across the room with a bright flash and deafening boom. The flames lick at Kiko's back, singeing the back of her neck and lighting a few clumps of hair into a short-lived fire. The spray of stone from both environment and opponent cut across the landscape, a few shards managing to pierce through the mesh outfit and dig into her skin. It's only after a few seconds of the stumbling, thunderous pounds of the wounded giant that she realizes she somehow survived this explosion without too much injury... huh.

Not one to allow the blinding pain of burnt and punctured skin to take her down, Kiko leaps back onto her feet to find the red prism lying loose across from her. Well, there's confirmation that one part of her master plan came through and all it takes is a glance over her shoulder to confirm that the other... didn't. Sure, the monster is prone on its heavily damaged knees blindly reaching around as if trying to find something to hold onto, but anything which can form itself from water alone can just as easily reform itself once it gets its bearings back. She's going to need a permanent solution...

Well, who says she has to kill this thing, anyway? There's only one relatively small exit out of this place and she still has three grenades. Rather than risk these grenades failing to destroy the crystal monster, it's better to instead seal the exit behind her. Boomy boomy. Kiko starts her wild dash, swinging the useless combo-rifle to her back and scooping up the prism. Of all the things for her to remember right this second, she now realizes she doesn't have any pouch or protective container to put this thing in... great. She only hopes it isn't radioactive or something.

Prize in hand, Kiko starts her circle towards the exit as the crystal behemoth rises to its feet. Just as she thought, flowing water is repairing it at a pretty rapid rate. Okay, then. Her incredible dash is still more than fast enough to get to the exit, but the approaching crystal on limestone footsteps of the oppressive opponent certainly aren't of a creature resigned to defeat. With her path clear, she throws the prism forward, yanks her belt off, and plucks all the pins in one swoop of the hand.

"Bye," Kiko dryly comments, swinging the belt in a vertical loop a few times before tossing it straight at the archway. With only a second to get to relative safety, she sprints up the ramp at full speed and scoops up the prism as she passes by. Just as one would expect from three overpowered grenades, the resulting explosion shakes the very foundation of the building as the flash travels even across these limestone walls. Fire floods the corridor as the shockwave catches up to Kiko, launching her through the air as the flames roll over her. Lucky her it was the end of the line for the fire and where one should be burnt to a cinder, she only gets a nasty sunburn. Talk about close...

"...ehh heh heh heh..." Kiko chuckles involuntarily, something about the whole situation amusing her. In a sense, this really was easier than all the stuff she went through on Radiant Garden. Sure, she did get tossed around, burnt, and pierced in this temple, but at least she didn't have to go through so many awkward social situations and put up with a constant confusion about what the hell she's doing. Here, she had a direct plan, a direct path, and all the tools needed on her person. She'd rather go through four more temples than stumble around aimlessly.

She still needs to get out of this place in order to write this off as a success, though. Picking herself up and brushing off the dust, Kiko picks up the prism as she casually strolls towards the exit... hmm... what about Simon? Obviously, she can't just leave him hanging outside, but perhaps she can take him along to Traverse Town? It seems Chou's range is good enough to allow it... nah. The less people that get involved with Axel, the better. Besides, she doesn't have permission and who knows how much that would affect her reputation...

The sound of scampering footsteps brings her mind back to the mission. A sidewards glance reveals four approaching Shimmers, two of them holding ugly brass necklaces in their claws. So that's where they were... well, she's certainly not going to show them any mercy now that she lobbed grenades at their leader and no doubt pissed off the collective way beyond distraction by shiny things.

With a draw of the pistol, she casually guns down three Shimmers, but the fourth is much too wily to go down so easily. It phases out of existence just as a bullet starts its way, the vaguely-tangible mass of light traveling like a cloud too fast to track. As Kiko spins around on her heels trying to find her mark, a minor flash of light brings the creature back in the process of a leap at her gun arm. While fast enough to get in two deep gashes that involuntarily twitch the pistol out of her hand, the Shimmer just isn't quite fast enough to escape the reflexive knife to the head. Still, that has to be at least an 8 out of 10 on the scale of surprise attacks. Bravo.

Clenching her fist through the agonizing pain, Kiko sheaths her knife and scoops up the dropped gun and prism with her undamaged arm. It's a good thing this happened on the way out rather than in because surely, an injury like this would cancel the entire mission... well, maybe. She can just go see her own private medic and get this patched over in a pink flash... yeah, that's the ticket.

A series of dull thuds in the distance brings Kiko's mind back to the present, the temple shaking harder with each thud. Obviously, her grenades didn't finish off the crystalline menace and now, it's looking for a way to reclaim its prize by smashing everything it can find. The softer noise of hissing and clawed feet scurrying from behind only cement the natural conclusion: she needs to get the hell out of the temple and fast.

Prism held like a football, Kiko starts her winding rush for the end posts near Chou to score a touchdown for the home team and... screw that analogy. The walls of the corridors kind of blur together due to the samey design of the limestone stonework, but she has an excellent sense of direction and knows implicitly what path she took and how-

Kiko collides into some soft, fleshy thing as she turns the corner. The grip on her prize tenacious to begin with, the prism launches up in the air as she scrapes her face across the stone floor. Instinct brings her to grab at her other gun, but her poor choice of hand results in the bad arm twitching and spasming from the blinding pain. It takes all her effort to keep from screaming, but unfortunately, the involuntary, localized seizure sends the gun out of her hand.

Still, she manages to grab at the second gun with her other arm and rise up to a crouch. It appears that her opponent is... a disheveled woman in her senior years wearing a tattered, filthy lab coat and bearing extensive scars and bruises visible through the holes in her outfit. In much better condition is the belt with all sorts of chemicals in flasks and the really large gun of some kind that she appears to have dropped... wait, Goldwater is here? So that means-

Before Kiko even gets a chance to contemplate an action, a thunder crack brings an electrically-charged uppercut that launches her in a beeline right into a nearby wall. None other than the grotesque marriage of twisted flesh and brass machinery known as Mondale and here he comes to finish her off in a shower of gibs. There's the burst of light and-

"Wait!" Goldwater shouts, Mondale reappearing with his fist less than a centimeter from Kiko's head, "I'll get her. Go kill the Heartless."

As if short-circuiting, Mondale stands frozen in place with a blank expression... not like his expressions ever had anything to them. That clawed scurrying, literally bashed out of Kiko's mind, returns in great force as a horde of Lightside Heartless spill around the corner. Shimmers, Lumines, and some flabby kind that she can't quite make out in the middle. Not like Mondale has any greater appreciation; in fact, for the shortest of seconds, he almost appears to be in two places at once as he suddenly tears right through the pack. Bash, bash, crush, splatter...

With Mondale's lightning punch temporarily paralyzing her, Kiko watches in horror as Goldwater strolls to the oversized gun. So much for this cockamamie mission to secure the prism and the respect of her peers in the process. Even if that girl in black is correct about the whole immortality/regeneration thing, can Kiko really go back to Riku with this story?

With a swivel of the hip, Goldwater fires what has to be the most impressive technicolor beam of a meter diameter right at the pack of Lightside Heartless. Even with Mondale still knee deep and bashing heads, the assault of energy tears right through him without the esteemed doctor giving a crap... in fact, even as Mondale falls to his knees and Heartless start slipping by, she keeps the beam trained on him as it burns his flesh into oblivion. Not until there's little more than a pile of brass machinery does Goldwater hose down the couple Shimmers and Lumines that get as close as a meter away from her. Did she really just...

"I surrender," Goldwater announces, throwing the gun aside and dropping to her knees with hands behind her head. Huh... Kiko is still mostly paralyzed and only just starting to get control of her toes back, but it seems to only really affect her extremities.

"What are you doing?" Kiko asks, the returning pain of her arm forcing a grimace on her face.

"I have the three prisms in my sack," Goldwater announces, carefully reaching down and opening it to reveal she's telling the truth, "Take me hostage, I'll tell you everything I know."

"Er... we kind of don't need those..." Kiko mutters, shaking the kinks out as she picks herself up. "...are you defecting to me?"

"Yes!" Goldwater exclaims, putting her free hand back in the position and bowing her head, "I don't care if I go to jail for the rest of my life. I don't even care if you kill me. Just take me away from Maleficent and her awful apprentice!"

"...I don't know if I'm allowed to do that..." Kiko says, carefully picking up one of her guns and training it on Goldwater lest something is up, "...how do I know I can trust you?"

"I could have killed you a hundred times by now," Goldwater announces, "But I chose to kill one of Maleficent's best minions and surrender to you."

"What if you have a tracking device or something?" Kiko asks as she holsters her gun, satisfied that she's not in any immediate danger.

"They can't do _anything_ technological without me," Goldwater declares, "Just take me to Fort Balzac or something if you're so worried. You don't have to take me to Riku or any of your other secret hideouts."

"I can't take you with me..." Kiko admits as she scoops up the prism, walking up to Goldwater, "...but Simon can... crap... are Mint and Cenari here?"

"Just Mint," Goldwater admits, Kiko tossing the prism in the sack and yanking it off, "Cenari should still fighting the titans. We really weren't expecting anyone to be here before we could set up the trap."

"...dammit!" Kiko yells as she realizes what this means, slinging the sack around her shoulder, "Dammit, dammit, DAMMIT!"

"Take me hostage," Goldwater offers, "I'm too important for them to risk losing. Mint knows this. They won't try anything if you have a gun to my head."

"But she probably killed everybody and destroyed the ship by now..." Kiko says, drawing a handgun as requested. Those thunderous thuds from before return in full force, the temple shaking hard enough to trickle pebbles down from the ceiling. Such great timing.

"You're going to have to chance it," Goldwater mournfully sighs. Kiko grimaces through the pain as she grabs the back collar with her bad arm, burrowing the barrel of her gun at the base of the old woman's skull.

"Walk," Kiko forcefully commands, trying to get in character for this next part. Hostage in tow, she resumes her journey back out of the temple. Isn't this a funny situation? She came in just hoping to get the prism and now, she may just have ended the war... provided Maleficent really is behind all this and Goldwater is still leading the troops. Come to think of it... where are the Heartless hordes, anyway? Are they intentionally not using them or something? Seems like it would be in their best interest to utilize Goldwater's best talents, but meh. Who cares?

Just as expected, Chou is still sitting safe and sound in her little alcove. It seems kind of funny that Goldwater and Mondale completely missed her, but then again, she wouldn't be visible except coming back from this angle. She almost seems to be meditating with her eyes closed and limbs limp, but odds are that she's just sleeping... a very light sleep. Just from the soft footsteps alone, she leaps right back on her feet and heads straight over to Kiko.

"Are you okay?" Chou asks, voice concerned as she stares at the bloody gashes.

"Could be better," Kiko responds, letting the collar go and extending her arm to the side, "Can you get this for me?"

Without a word in response, Chou lightly grabs Kiko's wrist with one hand and runs the other over the wounds as a pink light flows through. Just two seconds and she's good as new, only the slightest lingering of pain to remind her of the injury. Now that she's back in full capacity, she can really manhandle the hell out of her so-called 'hostage'.

"Chou," Kiko says, yanking Goldwater back with great force, "We have to get back to the ship. Please stay close and don't say anything."

"Got it," Chou confirms.

"Here we go..." Kiko says, unsure of herself. Given how Mickey's personal army intended to be the good guys, she never received any training on taking hostages. Diffusing hostage situations, sure, but never starting them. Still, it has to be as simple as holding the person in front as a human shield with a gun to the base of the skull and some fake twitchiness to imply that any slight upset will result in some brains being sprayed out the nose and eye sockets. Simple, right?

Not even four steps towards the front door later, a soft thud from behind grabs Kiko's attention. Shoving Goldwater aside for a moment, she turns to find Chou sprawled face flat on the ground.

"What happened?" Kiko asks, annoyed.

"I'm okay," Chou insists, pushing herself up onto her knees, "Just give me a second."

"I really can't afford to have you fall down out there," Kiko sighs, irritated, as she crouches down to the pink alien, "I'll give you a piggyback ride."

"Won't I just weigh you down?" Chou asks as Kiko swaps her assault rifle for the shotgun. At least the pink alien didn't fail in holding onto the extra weaponry.

"Definitely not nearly as much as you falling down out there," Kiko responds, turning and offering her back, "Giddy up."

"Okay..." Chou says, apprehensively, as she mounts Kiko's back once again. While Kiko can admire Chou's support abilities and everything, there has to come a point where an asset isn't worth the hassle and she has long passed that line. Between expensive food, constant emotional support, and the ease with which she becomes useless in harsh battle conditions, Chou is a liability. Still, it's not like it's too big a hassle to warrant abandoning her or something else equally drastic. Kiko will just have to carry on regardless of the pink albatross around her neck.

As Kiko and company approach the front door, the oddest thing starts to become audible: pleasant conversation. Not the pitched battle of guitar versus quartz or the proud silence of one standing victorious over the other, but just an easy-going conversation between a man and a young woman.

"...used to love Mötley Crüe," says the woman. Kiko shoves Goldwater to the side and peeks her head around the corner to find Simon and Mint sitting on some rocks. No fighting, no tenacious staring down; just chilling out. Most scary of all is Mint's face. Something completely, utterly beyond the imagination of even the most demented artist this side of Giger. She's... smiling?

"Yeah, the Crüe has talent," Simon continues, "I liked them better before Dr. Feelgood, though."

"But that was my favorite album," Mint retorts.

"It's their best album," Simon agrees, "But they just weren't the Crüe any more after they went through rehab. Who are Vince, Mick, Nikki, and Tommy but reliable tabloid drug fiends? It takes balls to die for a few minutes of an overdose, then proceed to get out of the ambulance to go get more heroin."

"Wow..." Mint says, "I never knew that."

"Besides," Simon continues, "They were the most fun when they were contrasts to new wave. After hearing a radio block of Human League, Spandau Ballet, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and all those other really fake dudes, you got to hear a group that knew they were fake and tried to be as fake as possible. Instead of guitars dressed up to sound like synthesizers, you got real guitars. When contrasted with rainbow polyester and bad haircuts, the girly outfits and even worse haircuts of the Crüe were like... um... I'm sorry, what was my point again?"

"Beats me," Mint admits, pulling some kind of PDA the size of the brick out of a skirt pocket, "Yeah... enough playing around. Tell me everything you know right now."

"All I know is that to me," Simon says in a sing-song voice, "You look like you're lots of fun. Open up your lovin' arms, I want some."

"You're obviously not alone," Mint says in an oddly jubilant but irritated voice, tossing the PDA aside and holding up three fingers, "I'm going to count to three. If you don't tell me how many people are with you, what equipment and powers they're armed with, and where I can find them by then, I'm going to kill you."

"Only kill me?" Simon asks, "You can be more creati-"

"One," Mint starts, bringing a finger back to her palm. Simon quickly glances side to side before suddenly jumping back into a magnificent backflip. Even with her snap reflexes, Mint finds her twitch summoning of a spiky crystal assault just a centimeter too slow to catch the almost-flying punk rocker. As if sensing her next move, Simon frets a chord and strums out a single, deafening note that resonates for miles. A note so powerful, in fact, that a traveling wave of distortion launches from the speakers and explodes the crystalline assault apart into a spray of vanishing sprinkles.

While certainly an impressive getaway, it's obviously not nearly enough to stop Mint's offensive. Even before landing, Simon shreds out a few more defiant chords into Mint's struggling wall of crystal spikes. With the sonic assault strengthening upon Simon's ground plant and crouching guitar stance, Mint leaps to the side just as the wall crumbles and the waves of distortion blast apart a crater where she once stood. With Mint now on her makeshift crystal railroad and zooming way too fast for Simon to target, Kiko figures now is the absolute best time to get this over with.

"Now," Kiko commands, yanking Goldwater close and bringing the shotgun muzzle under her chin as they advance outwards, "Stop! Both of you!"

"What the..." Mint comments, coming to a gradual stop only upon Simon's equally confused turn.

"Oh, hey, Wendy O.!" Simon says with a triumphant upwards pump of his guitar, "Great timing!"

"You guys look freakin' ridiculous." Mint says through a mild giggling fit, doing her best to hold it back, "It's like a three-headed, twelve limbed, four limp-winged chimera of blue, grey, and pink."

"If you do anything, I'll kill her!" Kiko shouts, jabbing the muzzle upwards into Goldwater's jaw for emphasis. She only hopes this is convincing enough to stop Mint from trying something stupid.

"You might want to point that gun so you don't accidentally shoot yourself," Mint sarcastically quips. She looks like she's having too much fun.

"They're slugs," Kiko improvises, starting a slow circle towards Simon, "They're not going to hit me. Get on your knees with your hands behind your head."

"Like that's going to hold back my powers, but whatever you say," Mint says with a roll of her eyes, complying to Kiko's demands, "I guess you threw your lot in with the wannabe good guys, huh, Goldies?"

"Do I look like I-" Goldwater attempts.

"Oh, please," Mint cuts off, "You're telling me some two bit thug with a couple peashooters like Wendy O. here managed to somehow disarm you and kill Mondale? Ha. I fought her before and I know she's a total waste of Mickey's private military training."

"What can I say?" Goldwater responds, "I saw the opportunity and took it."

"Mickey's old mob contract is still making its rounds," Mint says, "Hundred mil is a lot of munny. You don't really think you're going to be safe anywhere but with us, do you?"

"Wow," Simon comments as he joins Kiko and company, "You fished in a real marlin here, Wendy O."

"Is Wendy O. _really_ your name?" Mint asks, "I listen to Simon's radio show some times and know he loves nicknames nobody but he gets."

"It's Marle," Kiko lies, turning to Simon with a low voice, "Get the ship."

"Bull," Mint dismisses, "Not like I care. You're no rival. You don't deserve a name."

"Suit yourself," Kiko shrugs.

"Jamo," Simon whispers into his collar, "We need a rolling evac."

"Goldies!" Mint shouts through some repressed laughter, "I guess I shouldn't have bullied you so much. I agree the 'daily dose' was going too far, but it was your mental agony that made you the best Heartless summoner in the history of the universe. You should thank me for putting you in the history books!"

"Screw you!" Goldwater harshly retorts, "After I help UCoP take you and your freakin' mistress down, I'm going to _kill myself_ because of all the awful things you did to me these past seven months."

"No, please, don't; you have so much to live for!" Mint shouts, her sides splitting as she starts laughing maniacally.

"...is she drunk or something?" Kiko asks.

"It's my cologne," Simon explains, "For her to take it like this, she must be real scary deep inside."

"I bet you slip all your dates roofies as well," Mint comments, "Oh, how the tabloids would _love_ to hear about your magic beer goggle cologne!"

"Hey!" Simon says, unusually irritated for a change, "I didn't think my wishes through when Metadronis dragged me into this universe, okay?"

"Whatever lets you sleep at night," Mint jabs, "Some ladies man _you_ are. And you're throwing your lot with _these_ losers, Godies? You know we're gonna find you no matter where you run and... I guess I shouldn't have wasted all my best punishments, huh? I can't even threaten anything I haven't done fifty times alre-"

"Shut up," Kiko cuts in, sick and tired of listening to this crap. It's only upon Mint falling into silence with a cynical smirk that the distant thuds become audible. In all this confusion and faked attempts at controlling the situation, Kiko forgot all about the trapped crystal behemoth. For its struggle to be heard all the way out here must mean-

Suddenly, one of the stone walls to the temple bursts apart into a dozen huge pieces as the diamond Heartless shoulder-bashes right through. Of the many boulders sent flying, one almost seems target-locked right on Mint. It's a shame that without even flinching, she quickly summons a crystal wall that deflects the projectile over her head. Kiko would almost admire such a display of total comfort if it weren't for the incoming monster charging head on with footstomps that shake the very ground.

"Where's the ship?" Kiko asks, aiming her shotgun at the incoming opponent.

"Should be here in a sec," Simon responds, dashing forward a little as he readies his guitar, "I'll hold it back."

Simon gives one hell of a performance as he launches sonic wave after sonic wave, the air roaring with extensively distorted guitar feedback. While the impacts perhaps aren't powerful enough to outright kill the beast, they're certainly doing a good job of slowing it down. But try as Simon might with his mighty chops and licks, the diamond abomination proves to be just that much more punk rock than him and casually smacks him clean off his feet. With that nuisance gone, there is now nothing separating this Lightside Heartless from puny little Kiko and her companions.

"Oh, sh


	74. I Regret That I Am Yet Hungover

The spotlight burns. It burns credibility, it burns integrity, and given how fake everybody in the media is, it may as well burn the skin. If you aren't accustomed to the spotlight, it will burn away at your very life as you writhe and squirm. It is impossible to reside in the spotlight and ever be seen as a greater person. No matter how virtuous your cause or how bold your actions, the spotlight will burn right through to the rotten core. No matter how pure of heart or clean of essence, the intense light will despoil all that is good about you for the amusement of the plebs on the other side of the television screen and tabloid magazine. The spotlight destroys everything it is ever set upon.

So it has happened with Michael Selacia. Maybe he was never pure or charismatic to begin with, but even a just cause didn't do much to distract the public from dubious methods and a bad reputation with his students. It doesn't help that the spin doctors under Senator Billett's control had already done their magic at the major news broadcasters long before anything was released. To top it all off, Michael Moore gave all of five minutes to explain how typical this kind of corruption really is, but he is not a personal army to every oppressed person in the United States and won't be following up on the lead. If anything was the killing blow, it was that.

So with the story of Jason Vance's brutal beatings quickly buried under a rug of spin and the senator reelected for another term, all Selacia has to prove for his involvement is being known as 'that teacher that faked that video'. The spotlight shown on him and just like the millions before, found him unworthy and burnt him to a cinder. All that remains is the shell of a man waiting in an overly elaborate reception room to none other than the principal of Hometown High. The only thing missing is his picture on the front of the U.S. Weekly sitting on the coffee table, but they were considerate enough to at least include a small blurb: 'High School Beating a Hoax'. Even the trashy gossip has turned against him.

"Hometown High principal's office," answers the wannabe-cougar in a business blouse and raised hair, "...I'm sorry, he's busy right now. Do you want him to call you back?... okay... got it. He'll call back in the hour. Buh bye."

"I noticed you didn't type anything there," Selacia comments, "Are you doing this by memory now?"

"It was another concerned parent asking if your shenanigans were real," the secretary responds, "We've already given two press releases. We don't need to spend all day calling everybody personally. Please keep quiet until the principal sees you."

"I'm not a studen-" Selacia attempts.

"Shhhhhh!" the secretary cuts off. Selacia just shrugs his shoulders and stares blankly at the wall. Motivational posters sure have come a long way over the past couple decades. They may be ridiculed and mocked, but would it be a school without them? As if your average teenager is going to heed a poster of an important businessman looking up to a statue of a hero while a caption talks about childhood goals setting up future success. Maybe it would connect better if it were Gerard Way instead of an executive and the statue was for one of the members of Weezer. Or perhaps Shia LaBeouf looking up to Christian Slater. Everybody wants to be a rock star or movie god, after all; not a billionaire business tycoon.

It doesn't take too much longer for the ominous door to the principal's office to open, revealing none other than Jason Vance. He doesn't exactly look too enthused about his situation, but that doesn't necessarily mean much of anything. What does mean something is the gesture he makes to Selacia: a horizontal flat palm held in front of his throat and brought to a side while he contorts his face.

"Selacia," calls out a husky voice, "You're up."

"How do you spell your last name again?" the secretary asks as Selacia rises up.

"It's S. E. L. A-" Selacia starts.

"I don't have all day," the principal interrupts, still deep in his office.

"C-I-A," Selacia quickly finishes, turning on his heel and walking into the would-be foreboding office if he didn't already know what's inside. Just as expected, the office contains so much crap from the Sharper Image and Skymall catalogs, it would make any political activist cry for the hard-earned tax payer money going towards mercury mazes and Pin Art with humiliating facial expressions recorded for the ages. As if going for the motherlode, this office even includes none other than a 'jump to conclusions' mat. He probably is the kind of person that bought it without ever realizing the movie it comes from is a satire.

"Hello, Mikey," greets an old man in a dapper Armani suit with his tie loose and his top button undone. It certainly goes well with his loosely combed grey hair of a few centimeters that do little to hide the bald spot with unsightly liver spots. He stands over a roll-out astroturf mat with a Titleist putter hanging low by his Crockett & Jones dress shoes. Sadly, this isn't too far from the permanent mental image in Selacia's head; pretty par for the course, in fact.

"Do you play golf in front of the students?" Selacia asks as he takes a seat in the black Brenta leather sofa.

"Of course," the principal admits, "Relaxed atmosphere and all that."

"If you say so," Selacia sighs, "What were you talking about with Mr. Vance?"

"Now, now," the principal admonishes, putting a ball about half a meter to the side of the hole, "Our disclosure policy doesn't allow sharing this kind of information without due cause."

"What 'disclosure policy'?" Selacia asks, squinting an eye, "...you expelled him, didn't you?"

"'Expel' is such a harsh word," the principal comments, knocking another ball to the 'go wild' square on the nearby mat, "And no, I didn't. I just had a talk with him about his permanent record. You see, he's really quite bright and got incredible grades in all his classes. In fact, given his education level, it turned out that all he needed to graduate were a few AP classes that... he already took and aced as of ten minutes ago. All he has to do is just sit at home and watch cartoons for a few months until June to receive his paper. Of course, with this incident involving duct tape, sandpaper, and a naive freshman also on his record, it might have been a little hard to graduate if the person that noticed it didn't... well... 'ignore' it. I think he made the right choice."

"You're unusually blunt with the euphemisms today..." Selacia comments, "'Graduating' him without a full education or a record that colleges won't find fishy is just as bad as expelling him."

"Oh, like anyone gets a full education here anyway," the principal only half-sarcastically quips, somehow knocking this ball backwards behind him, "Speaking of teaching, I found a nice young black lady from the projects. Witty, bright, crawled her way up from the gutters. She helped her school become eligible for grants by raising the average GPA almost two tenths all by herself. Real inspiring sob story and she's going to fit in great as our new history teacher."

"I have _tenure_," Selacia says with a frown, not even needing a second to pick up on the tone, "The union is going to throw a fit over this."

"Tenure can be revoked given cases of disreputable, defamatory actions," the principal explains, knocking his last ball straight into the hole, "I already talked with the union and they agree: you went too far and your presence at this school is no longer welcome nor required. Nothing more to discuss."

"All this because I stood up against the senator's daughter?" Selacia asks, courteously kicking a wayward ball back to the principal, "I know you stopped giving a crap a long time ago, but come on. What happened to politics ending at the front door?"

"The police have declared this a cold case," the principal declares, knocking the ball about ten centimeters up in the air without it moving from its starting place, "You're only lucky they do not have enough evidence to arrest you for false allegations, either."

"If the police actually investigated this instead of taking a bribe and sitting on their asses," Selacia says, his voice already defeated, "They would find more than enough evidence to convict her."

"Conspiracy, conspiracy, conspiracy," the principal mockingly recites, kicking the ball into the hole and tossing his club aside as he starts towards his mahogany desk, "That's the kind of balderdash that our students don't need in their history classes. Miss Jackson will be ready to move into your office by Monday, so please make sure it's nice and tidy by then. That will be all."

"So it is," Selacia shrugs as he starts towards the door, pausing and turning back, "Before I go, something I've wanted to say all these years. There's 'relaxed'... and then there's 'not giving a crap'. You're so far away from the former, no pair of rangefinders would ever catch the faintest glimpse of it. I'm sure you read _The Peter Principle_ back when it was the hot new book while you were still in college. It's such a shame you seem so resigned to fulfilling its destiny."

"And don't unplug your computer on the way out," the principal calls out as Selacia quickly departs the office.**  
**

* * *

**.**

* * *

If Selacia were the sentimental type, this would be a somber moment of reflection upon the many years of selfless sacrifice being thrown away because he dared to stand for justice. Instead, it's more a sigh of relief that he'll be getting an obligatory severance package to go with this firing. Sure, the administration will go to great lengths to justify keeping it away, but without a court conviction, they don't have a strong case.

Still, rather than just flip off the administration and steal as many office supplies as possible, Selacia is courteous enough to distribute the wealth of ball point pens and printer paper to the overworked janitorial department. Not like he used them much anyway since he believes in the efficiency of computers... speaking of which, while the principal said not to unplug the computer, he didn't say anything about the hard drive. Selacia can only smirk at how a great idea for mischief was practically handed to him; he'd never have thought it up himself.

So with a cardboard box containing his most valuable tchotchkes in his arms, he makes one final stroll down the hallway of this glitzy school. As much as he truly hates this place, deep down, he's going to miss the meaningless trophy cases, constantly retconned historical iconography, and the constant busywork done to keep everything sparkling. It comes as a surprising coincidence that he nearly bumps into none other than Dana Billett. Whatever she's doing in these hallways near closing time at 20:00, he can only guess.

"Good evening, Selacia," Dana greets, a mean smile on her face.

"Good evening, Billett," Selacia responds, "Fancy seeing you here. Going to gloat about your victory?"

"You put so little faith in me," Dana admonishes, "You don't really think I got you fired, do you?"

"No way you could have heard that from the rumor mill so fast..." Selacia continues, "So yes, I think you _did_ get me fired... or got daddy-kins to get me fired, anyway."

"You have to admit," Dana starts, "It was fun while it lasted, wasn't it?"

"Not especially, no," Selacia answers, "Maybe it would have been fun if the news were fair and balanced, but I guess old daddy-kins has deep pockets, huh?"

"The news is all crap for sale, anyway," Dana comments, "You had to have known that going in, right?"

"The news loves sensationalism," Selacia corrects, "I thought they'd leap at the chance to take your family down a notch. I didn't think they could dismiss a video of that caliber."

"As if they'd ever intellectually challenge the pitiful minds of Joe and Mary Whitebread," Dana shrugs, "When was the last time the news ever favored the unphotogenic person?"

"I guess this world really is full of idiots..." Selacia sighs, "I should have known better... what do you plan to do with your life?"

"Huh?" Dana asks, confused.

"You're a senator's daughter," Selacia continues, "You must have your whole life laid out for you."

"Honestly?" Dana starts, "I don't know what I want in life. I know I don't want to hold office or manage people, so my family doesn't really like me. I was thinking of maybe trying a proper sport instead of just being mommy's little cheerleader."

"That always did puzzle me," Selacia shrugs, "Along with why you're in a public school, but I think your behavior answers that. Maybe you should consider the military?"

"Oh, hell no," Dana dismisses, "Me? In the military? They'd just stick me in a motor pool where I just drive supplies around and get sexually harassed. Besides, guns are stupid. Point, click, dead. Knives and other bladed weapons are where it's at."

"It's real illuminating to talk with-" Selacia says, Dana interrupting him by drawing a knife and attempting to stab him. It's only by his snap reflexes that he blocks with his box of memorabilia, using it to yank the embedded knife out of Dana's hand and throwing both down the nearby hallway. Selacia leaps back a few paces just barely in time to avoid the follow up kick, holding his hands in front at the ready.

"You really think you can literally get away with murder?" Selacia asks, outraged.

"Murder, no," Dana corrects, loosening up in a threatening manner, "Self-defense, yes."

"This is a big mistake you're making," Selacia says, maintaining a matched pace backwards away from the deranged cheerleader, "You wouldn't want to live knowing you made orphans of my children, would you?"

"...what freakin' children?" Dana asks, her eyes squinted suspiciously, "You really _are_ just making this all up as you go along, aren't you?"

"Aren't you clever?" Selacia comments. Before he gets any real respite, Dana makes another rush at him with fire in her eyes. Selacia may not really exhibit the trappings of one with combat skills, but he manages a surprisingly effective defense against his lithe opponent. While hardly on par with a proper martial art such as judo, his backwards hops and full-arm blocks prove good enough to stop six or seven jabs. Unfortunately, there's only so long that an inexperienced man trying to avoid inflicting any harm can go and despite his best efforts, all it takes is one hit to the kidney to start a rather brutal pounding ending with him on the ground.

"Get up," Dana forcefully commands, taking a few steps back away from her sprawled opponent.

"You're making a big mistake here," Selacia repeats, refusing to budge from his position, "Even if daddy-kins went to bat for you with that last incident, there's just no way he's going to waste more money and favors to spin this in your favor."

"He already has," Dana declares, walking in and dragging Selacia up onto his knees by his shirt, "You can either go to prison by fighting back or die by doing nothing, so fight back, dammit!"

"No," Selacia denies, resigned to his untimely fate. With absolutely no remorse whatsoever, Dana maintains a grip on the man's shirt with one hand as she mercilessly pounds into his face with the other. Even as the sprays of blood with each hit to the shattered nose stain her outfit, she never once stops to even rest her wary knuckles. No matter how many hits it takes, she is determined to make him do something, anything, that might be construed as the first assault warranting this brutal retaliation, but he simply won't give in. He'd rather die than give her the satisfaction.

Fortune seems to favor Selacia for a change because even without any real witnesses about, here comes a whole squadron of police with weapons at the ready. So the independent security system really was worth the taxpayer money after all...

"This is the police," the head policeman announces, "We have you surrounded! Cease your attacks and put your hands behind your head!"

"See?" Selacia says, spitting out the blood that pours into his open mouth, "There's only so far you can go."

"They're talking to you," Dana corrects, stepping two paces to the side.

"Sir," the policeman insists, "If you do not comply, we will have to use force!"

"Are you blind?" Selacia says, complying to the order anyway, "_She's_ the one beating the crap out of _me_."

"Put down your weapon and let the hostage go!" the head policeman asserts, gesturing threateningly with his handgun.

"...they're going to shoot me, aren't they?" Selacia sighs, "What a hackneyed plot straight from a USA network original movie. I bet these aren't even real policemen, either."

"Aren't you clever?" Dana mirrors, still standing close by with a surprising confidence in her own safety.

"This is your last warning!" the head 'policeman' shouts, "If you do not drop your weapon and let the hostage go, we'll-"

"Screw this universe," Selacia sighs, flicking his wrist-watch off into his hand, "Great and mighty Metadronis, overseer of the..."

"Wha...?" Dana attempts to interrupt, chuckling nervously.

"...great divide," Selacia continues, uninterrupted, "Recall those fated to your service and deliver us unto..."

"He's gone insane!" the head 'policeman' shouts, "Take him down!"

"...the tainted realm," Selacia finishes, hanging his head low as the fake police fire their weaponry. Just when one would expect a hail of bullets to perforate the delusional teacher, time instead seems to snap down to a stop with the searing lead only centimeters away. Everything seems to hang in place for the longest of seconds before another snap sends a blue shockwave that launches all the attackers off their feet. Before they even get a chance to crumple across the floor like rag dolls, a set of glowing blue runic symbols arranged in a circle etch themselves onto the ground around Selacia and Dana.

"...what the... how in the... but..." Dana mutters, her mind apparently broken as she tries to comprehend this turn of events.

"_You?_" Selacia exclaims, shocked, as he rises to his feet, "I didn't designate you. Who the hell _are_ you?"

"...impossible..." Dana drawls, staring blankly into the distance, "Can't be real. Must have been slipped something."

"I guess you're coming along," Selacia sighs, "Just a suggestion..."

"...out of a kid's book..." Dana mutters, "I stopped reading those when I was ten. They can't possibly be right... I refuse it..."

"...nevermind," Selacia dismisses, holding up his glowing blue watch up in the air, "Now!"

Just as suddenly as the runic symbols came forth, everything within the circle collapses into nothingness. No sound, no light, and not a trace of evidence left of neither Selacia nor his unintended companion. Sure is going to be a pisser for the morning janitor to find a bunch of dead bodies dressed up as police.

* * *

**.**

* * *

Dana wakes with a sudden jolt, eyes fixed upwards at the ceiling. Just as it is with any striking dream, a flood of images overwhelm as she tries to make sense of it all. She seems to remember something blue, something unusual, and everything kind of broke apart at the end. The usual kind of mind screw dream that dissolves right before her eyes, leaving only a few vague images and some lingering emotions. Oh, well; there goes the alarm clock. Rise and shine.

Unfazed, she grabs a bottle from her bedside cooler as she rolls out of bed. Another busy day as the idol of the school awaits her and she damn well doesn't wake up at 5:45 to admire the flowers. She chugs the watery shake down as she strides across her large room and tosses the empty bottle into the basket near her bathroom door. After the usual morning pee, she tosses her pajamas off on her way out the other door as she emerges in her own private fitness room. Machines, bars, dumbbells, pads, and ropes, all pristine, all her's. Some rich girls ask for ponies; she asks for health.

She certainly does appreciate another perk to being rich: not having to compete with the plebs for her mandatory half hour on a treadmill, elliptical, stationary cycle, or rowing machine. To think that people have to shower, put on clothing, gather a big bag of supplements, drive to some health club, park, scan in, and put up with other people makes her chuckle. She doesn't have to deal with that noise; just wake up and get right to work.

This morning, she's going with the upper regime. Start with some cycling to get the blood flowing, then go straight for the usual push-ups, pull-ups, presses, cable-cross, and such. Low weight, high reps, fluid movement, low recovery times. After all, she's not aiming for that water-bag look; she just wants to be able to run up a flight of stairs without having to catch her breath while still being thin and attractive. With her half-hour of resistance in, she downs a pre-made shake and goes straight back to the cycle for her half-hour of cardio. Burn the fat away before a single carb enters her system.

Just as timed, she finishes up right as the clock strikes seven. It amuses her to think that lesser girls would be waking up right about now and deluding themselves about their attractiveness while they ready themselves for another humiliating day at school. Sure, being mommy's vicarious vessel means getting personal trainers on par with those of supermodels, but she's willing to work for her image. What have those deluded geeks within the goth, emo, or hipster scenes done besides cover up their flaws with heavy make-up, overpriced clothing, and irritating behavior?

Unfortunately, it seems the idiot in charge of housekeeping has missed her post-workout shake yet again. How do they even manage to screw up in this really specific way? Surely, filling two other shakes and assorted water bottles must jog the memory. They must be doing this to piss her off. Now she has to waste five or six minutes walking through the house in a bathrobe. Wonderful. Simply wonderful. Luckily, only one room away from the kitchen, she spots the living room television on some static channel as a person slouches in a comfy chair. It's even re-arranged to sit right in front of the screen. How irritating.

"Hey, Sarah!" Dana yells to the back of the chair, "You forgot the post-shake _yet again_, you freaking aspie retard. What the hell does mom even see in you, anyway?"

"Hello, Dana Billett," says a somber voice as the chair slowly turns around to reveal not a woman, but instead, a very attractive man in a business casual outfit. In fact, attractive doesn't begin to describe him: Ewan McGregor, Jude Law, and Christian Bale could only ever wish they were nearly this hot. While her body seems quite intent to have its way with him, Dana's brain is past such impulsive desires. Besides, this person still forgot her shake and needs to get chewed out on it now lest he be an eternal screw-up.

"...did mom get sick of girls or something?" Dana asks, confused, "Where's her pet lesbian?"

"Oh, Dana, Dana, Dana," the man chuckles, "Don't you know where you are?"

"...my living room?" Dana quips, turning towards the kitchen, "Look, I need my breakfast, so-"

"That won't be necessary," the man says, the door closing on Dana's face.

"Real cute," Dana sighs, reaching for the doorknob to find it jammed. Not merely locked since that would allow for about a centimeter of travel, but completely frozen in place. So much for all the money they spent on high grade contractors. Since this hallway is no good, she'll just have to go through the living room with Mr. Weird. Just as she enters, not only does that door to the kitchen also slam shut, so does the door she walked through. Okay, this has gone on long enough.

"Look," Dana cuts to the chase, "I can respect you want to kidnap a senator's daughter for the ransom. After all, we're rich and really don't want the publicity. However, everybody that has ever kidnapped a Billett has ended up dead in one way or another, so you might want to just leave. I can give you the address and schedule of an equally rich family to target on the way out. She's a fat loudmouth, so I don't-"

"No," the man interrupts, "You're not on your world any more."

"Really..." Dana sighs, "Please start making sense."

"Didn't my messenger explain anything to you?" the man asks.

"...no?" Dana says, confused, "...oh, you're that talent scout, aren't you? Mom mentioned you months ago, but I thought I was passed over because-"

"I am a Seraph by the name of Metadronis," the man interrupts, rising out of his seat, "You've been selected as one of the chosen many to restore order to the parallel universe and free it from the corrupted grip of Kingdom Hearts."

"...I used to read books like that," Dana says, "Narnia and all those cheap knockoffs I used to get for three bucks at the drug store. You must have been stalking me a long time because I stopped reading them in middle school."

"No," the man now known as Metadronis continues, "I'm serious."

"Really..." Dana says, wary.

"Yes," Metadronis asserts.

"So you want me to find the magical sword, confront the dark lord, and rescue the handsome prince?" Dana asks with a really sarcastic voice, continuing to the kitchen door, "If you're still here after I get my breakfast, I'm going to break your windpipe."

Dana attempts the doorknob to find it just as frozen as the last. Lovely. The usual hip and shoulder bashes do nothing to budge the door, so she takes a few steps back and launches herself into a flying kick right at it. For something so stubborn, it certainly does crumple really easily to this kick.

Unfortunately, rather than the polished stone and sleek graphite of the kitchen, she finds a whole mass of black emptiness. Some involuntary instinct makes her grab at the door frame, harsh gravity dragging her downwards to the intersection with the floor. A glance downwards reveals a swirling vortex of dark purple, the broken pieces of the door spiraling in a wide circle before vanishing into nothingness. It takes all of Dana's strength to pull herself back up, scampering across the living room floor to the furthest corner possible. What the...

"Welcome to the Intermediary Realm," Metadronis says, "Do you believe me now?"

"...no," Dana declares defiantly, "This isn't real. I'm in a dream and I will wake up soon."

"You're a mistake, aren't you?" Metadronis asks, "Why am I not surprised?"

"Hey, wait, I'm in a dream," Dana says, smiling, "I can do whatever I want!"

"I need you to choose a set of powers..." Metadronis says, rolling his eyes as Dana slips her bathrobe to the floor, "Please put your clothes back on."

"Hey there, hot stuff," Dana says, slinking seductively towards the incredibly attractive man, "Only my dreams could ever produce a man as hot as..."

With a snap of his fingers, Metadronis conjures forth a simple teal dress over the approaching teen. She looks down at the rather prudish clothing in disbelief, Metadronis watching in disappointment.

"Come on..." Dana comments, "This is _my_ dream and you're a figment of _my_ imagination. Let me have my guilt-free dream sex, dammit!"

"Typical human," Metadronis sighs, "Now, since you get to be one of the poor saps that has to clean up the mess caused by Kingdom Hearts and our abortive first champion, you're allowed to design your powers. Superhuman strength, superluminal speed, the power to control the elements, and much more await, but there are limits by which you must adhere. You may make requests for anything and I will..."

Metadronis trails off as Dana starts moving in once again, lust in her eyes. With a sigh, he makes a flicking motion that somehow launches her back into the nearby wall. With the girl pinned against the surface by an invisible force, he resumes his speech.

"...gauge their effectiveness compared to your assigned role," Metadronis continues, "Of course, given how those three dollar paperbacks you bought in your youth are apparently pretty close to reality, we won't tell you jack about what you're supposed to do. Makes for good television amongst my companions to watch baffled humans like you squirm around in the dark with only the faintest glimmer of some overarching destiny to cling onto. Do you have any questions?"

"Why the hell am I being dragged into this cheap fantasy story?" Dana asks, apparently giving up the pretense of it being a dream she has any control over. She may as well just play along.

"Ah, the classic," Metadronis quips, "'Why did I have to be the chosen one?' Well, first off, you're not anything special. We already have about sixty of them in your designated era just from your universe alone. Second, if you think this means you're going to defeat the dark lord and save the day, you're so very, very wrong. Where you're going, the war against an oppressive evil... if you can even really call amoral blobs of darkness 'evil'... has been going on for upwards of 35,000 years. I kind of doubt an irresponsible fop like you is going to turn the tides, so don't fret over it."

"Then why were you acting like I matter in the first place?" Dana asks.

"Standard operating procedure," Metadronis sighs, "If we throw about two billion 'destined ones' at this problem, one of them will turn out just right. What if it really is you, but because I told you that you're just going to end up burnt at the stake, you decide to rent an apartment and get a minimum wage job for all eternity? No. Like everybody we fielded before you and everyone we will field after you, you are the destined one to restore order to the universe. End of story. What oh-my-god special powers do you want?"

"I want to be a goddess," Dana sarcastically responds.

"That's just a little out of your pay scale," Metadronis comments, "Maybe it would help if I presented the three official templates?"

"Does one of them allow me to control this dream?" Dana asks, "I feel like flying through the skies or making Hugh Jackman my boyfriend."

"...wait here," Metadronis says, vanishing from the room in a wave of visual distortion. Dana sighs at the thought that this is going to be one of those completely stupid dreams where absolutely nothing of note happens. To think she finally got her shot at a proper lucid dream and her own mind won't even cooperate with her...

...after only about twenty seconds, Metadronis reappears right in the same place. Same pose, even.

"That was fast," Dana comments, "Did you just need to go to the bathroom or something?"

"I talked with about seven tiers of bosses and guess what?" Metadronis starts, "They granted me autonomy for this case."

"What does that even mean?" Dana asks, incredulous.

"It means _screw you_," Metadronis loudly declares, pointing two fingers downwards in a single jabbing motion. Just as suddenly as every other action on this bizarre alien plane, the house shatters into a million billion pieces all around Dana. With nothing left to support the teen girl in place, she spirals down into the vortex at breakneck speeds. Even as apparent doom approaches her, she is calm and serene for after all, this is only a dream and she will no doubt wake when she hits the bottom. Only a dream...

* * *

**.**

* * *

Hospitals are boring. So very, incredibly boring. It's a wonder that so many TV shows can take place in them given how completely dull and uninteresting real hospital work really is. Sure, they might have such grand delusions such as every code blue involving the mad rush of dozens of chattering doctors and Dr. House somehow holding tenure, but those are the machinations of underpaid scriptwriters. Real hospital life mostly just involves changing bedpans and calling back to let people know that their tests came back negative. How exciting.

Of course, given that working in a hospital is a tedious job, it's only natural that staying in one as a patient is a thousand times worse. All a poor girl like Jamie has to do all day is browse the internet through the extensively filtered network connection. It's really kind of ridiculous how far they go; they even banned her favorite scene websites. What the hell was wrong with them that prompted the head admin to ban them? She just wants to talk about Fall Out Boy's upcoming album and rumored break-up, not browse porn or 4chan or anything like that...

As if sensing her slightest glimmer of hope in finding an unbanned proxy, a nurse waltzes right in through the door. That's another thing she hates about this damn place: no privacy whatsoever. Lucky she trained herself to minimize all browser windows just for such routine occasions. Now she just needs to wait the agonizing minute or two for this intruder to leave.

"Hello, there, Miss Lerquin!" the nurse jubilant greets in a voice more befitting a kindergarten teacher, "How are you today?"

"Awful," Jamie types into her text to speech without even glancing up, her words coming out as a flat monotone voice, "I want to talk with my doctor."

"Your doctor?" the nurse asks, "Why?"

"Because this sucks," announces the computer speaker, "I have been stuck here for months. I can stand up and walk around just fine. Can't I just get a portable breathing device and carry a text to speech with me?"

"But how will you eat?" the nurse asks.

"I can make my own paste to drink from a tube," says the synthesizer.

"What if you get an infection?" asks the nurse.

"I'll risk it," the synthesizer responds, "I'd rather die than spend the rest of my life in a hospital bed. Why have I been abandoned here? Why can't the doctors fix my throat?"

"Do you really want the truth?" the nurse asks.

"Yes," the synthesizer responds.

"You could have had your throat repaired in less than a week," the nurse explains, "But the Billett family is good friends with your doctor and paid him off to keep you cooped up in here due to vague medical reasons. You've been fed a subtle mix of depressants and slow-acting toxins ever since while they systematically take away everything that makes you happy. They want you to commit suicide or otherwise die from an 'unforseen circumstance' so you could never testify against them."

"Who are you?" the synthesizer asks, Jamie finally looking up. While it's definitely a nurse, she looks way too attractive for such a job. She is such a breath-taking beauty, she should be getting stalked by a dozen modeling agencies every time she leaves the house. What is she doing in this place?

"I am a Seraph by the name of Metadronis," the stunningly radiant nurse starts, "I am one of many celestial beings charged with maintaining order across the multiverse. A great cataclysm is going to occur in a parallel universe and we need a chosen warrior to stand up against the machinations of a genocidal intergalactic empire."

"Ha ha ha ha ha very funny," says the monotone synthesizer, "Either kill me or go away."

As if taking up the challenge, the nurse by the awkward name of Metadronis walks to the side of the bed and yanks both of the tubes out of Jamie's throat. The icky plastic things sliming their way out of her system really send her gag reflex into overdrive, her body going into an involuntary coughing fit. As she hacks and whoops the fluid build-up all over her hospital sheets, the panic dies down to reveal that she's also gasping air back in without too much effort. Almost seems alien after all this time without having to breathe on her own.

"How do you feel?" Metadronis asks

"Howwival," Jamie slurs with a few last coughs, grabbing her throat in surprise, "Wait, I've been fine all this time?"

"You are no longer in what you may call 'the real world'," Metadronis explains, walking over to a curtained window and opening it to reveal a swirling vortex of stars, "We're on the Intermediary Realm or, as you might say, the Realm of In-Between. It is my duty to groom those chosen for service with the tools and abilities necessary to fulfill their destiny and maintain order across the universe."

"...so you're a valkyrie?" Jamie asks.

"Oh, no, of course not," Metadronis dismisses with a warm chuckle, "Should you choose to accept my offer, I will bestow upon you power like you've never imagined and remold your body any way you see fit. If you decline, I'll return you back to your old body on Mundane Eurasian Earth, no harm, no foul. What do you wish?"

"...sell me," Jamie responds with a shrug.

"I don't understand," Metadronis says.

"I accept," Jamie clarifies, "What do you need from me?"

"It's quite easy," Metadronis says, gently pushing Jamie onto her back with two fingers on her forehead, "Just lie back, relax, imagine who you want to be, and let Matron Metadronis do the rest."**  
**

* * *

**.**

* * *

Human history is littered with abstract powers beyond its comprehension. Yahweh, Zeus, Odin, Ra, Brahma, Enlil; the list is endless and all they have in common is great cosmic power and no direct intervention with humanity. After all, that which is unknown and unknowable will always hold more weight than that which one can go bar-hopping with.

Still, as odd as it may seem, some beings that many would consider gods do exist and do hold a vested interest in the universe. Sure, peeling the layers back reveal them to be just as fallible, fickle, and unglamorous as any old human, but given the extent of their unknowable presentation and great control over the environment, one would never manage to get so far.

One person who managed to go the distance is none other than Michael Selacia, the supposed school teacher with a poor grasp of his own personal history and a vested interest in meting out justice in an apathetic system. To think that the tired-looking, beaten-to-hell man would ever hold such tools to travel to this intermediary plane is beyond surprising. Even better, the stage isn't even properly set yet: steel pipes, exposed spotlights, and other framework lies all around in disarray. The presence of a bloodied school teacher amidst the celestial stage equipment certainly doesn't go unnoticed by those in charge of this secluded space.

"Who are you?" booms a gender-ambiguous voice over what must be a loudspeaker.

"I am a disciple of Metadronis," Selacia yells to the ceiling, the cavernous room loudly echoing his every syllable, "Send her out, please."

"How did you get here before the start of our official operation?" the booming voice asks, "Metadronis has no disciples and has yet to meet with any humans such as yourself."

"Does it matter?" Selacia calls back, "Time is relative and has no meaning between the planes. We both know this. If you want your latest operation to succeed, you must send Metadronis to speak with me right now."

The room goes silent as the last echoes of Selacia's voice die down, the director apparently no longer at its console. Given that he's still standing there instead of falling into limbo, Selacia is quite satisfied that he must be getting through to the right people... deities... spirits... whatever. Now all he has to do is sit down on one of the loose piles of steel bars and wait for this meeting with destiny.

He certainly doesn't have to wait long because with a simple blink, a framed door appears in the middle of the room. It opens to reveal a vague humanoid figure made of translucent rainbow streams with no specific features to speak of. After a few seconds, the skin of this creature solidifies into that of a blank slate human of indeterminate gender; as though it never had a single drop of either testosterone or estrogen in its entire life. The generic human finishes off with a generic white robe, the door closing behind it and blinking back out of existence.

"Hello, Metadronis," Selacia greets, "Long time, no see."

"I do not know who you are," the generic thing known as Metadronis responds in a flat monotone.

"Of course not," Selacia continues, pulling a well-worn set of papers rolled up as if to swat a naughty puppy, "Not yet, anyway. Let's get down to business, shall we? These papers have all the directions you need in order to insure the success of this new operation. Please make sure they make their way back to me on our next meeting."

"Huh?" Metadronis says, confused, as it takes the roll of papers, "...who wrote this?"

"I don't know," Selacia admits.

"The instructions here say for me to give this to you on our second meeting," Metadronis starts, holding up the stack of sheets, "And for you to give it to me now. You give it to me, I give it to you, you give it to me, I give it to you, but who wrote it?"

"I really don't know," Selacia repeats, "I just know that without them, this operation is doomed to failure."

"This is a paradox," Metadronis explains, "Nobody wrote these papers. They just sprung into existence and have been passed back and forth eternally. Since there's no stopping point in this back and forth, they're aging eleven years every cycle and should have crumpled to dust by now."

"Something like that, yes," Selacia comments.

"They have you dragging yourself into the Celestial Transfer system," Metadronis continues, "Which you only did because these papers told you to do so, but you only got these because I gave them to you in the Celestial Transfer system that you dragged yourself into. This is impossible."

"And that's why I trust them," Selacia says, "They must have been written by a higher power and set into motion. Isn't a time loop proof enough of that?"

"Or they could just be completely made up by you," Metadronis says, "But that doesn't explain how you got here or why you know me... I accept."

"Thank you," Selacia says.

"These directions don't say what we're supposed to do now," Metadronis says.

"Oh, just send me back to Earth in the far future," Selacia says, "I'm not so deluded to believe _Star Trek_ ever came true, but I think the year 2260 or so would be good."

"It shall be done," Metadronis says, summoning forth another door. Nothing fancy, nothing flashy, and Selacia merely walks through it with no pomp or celebration whatsoever.


	75. She's Dangerous

Once again, Emily finds herself in what can only be described as limbo; funny how she keeps coming back here. A black void stretches from end to end, the leftover debris of reality scattered all around. Thinking about it, she realizes there's some similarity in feel if not in appearance with the so-called 'Realm of In-Between': both are divorced from reality, both are crushingly vague black pits, both have their own laws of physics. About the only difference between the two is one supposedly exists and one is just electrical signals in her brain, but then again, how does she know the former wasn't also imaginary?

_Now you see?_

Emily searches around for a source, her generic white dress gently shuffling against the flat-grey steel ground. Has Metadronis recalled her due to her staggering incompetence? Given the last memory where she was in control was of that crystal giant charging in to crush her into a fine paste, it's entirely possible she's dead and just stuck in the seraphim waiting room for a scolding and possible banishment to hell. Still, that doesn't explain why she had visions of those people from her old world... huh...

_Now you know how it all started. How it will end all depends on you._

"Who are you?" Emily shouts to nowhere in particular, giving a shocked expression as she realizes she used her 'voice'. All this time being unable to do much of anything in these dreams and now, she's able to act like a normal person. Still, there has to be so much more she can do...

_The same person you've been talking to all this time. The same person you've known all your life._

"That doesn't answer my question," Emily answers disinterestedly, more fascinated by this idea of control than by the vagueness of this unseen voice. If this is her dream, kept within her mind and animated by her thoughts, shouldn't she be able to change her outfit? With just a whim, she should be able to change it from white to blue... and there it goes. With a simple shift, it changes over to a tasteful aquamarine. Easy... but why stop there?

Before she gets a chance to explore this new avenue, something grabs her from behind. While such an action should send her instinctive reflexes into overdrive, the awareness of the dream leaves Emily pretty lax. Even then, the gentle caress around her stomach and soft purr of the body behind dispels all notion of assault.

"My dear, lost girl," the female figure behind softly whispers, rubbing her head in Emily's shoulder, "Fumbling in the dark, unaware of your fate. You no longer have to fear for here I am, ready to set you on the right path and redeem you in the eyes of destiny."

"You again?" Emily sighs, still not motivated to make any move, "What the hell do you want from me?"

"Shouldn't it be obvious?" the female asks, "Metadronis set me on my task so long ago, but even as the ancient empire went down around me, those last few remnants lingered for over 35,000 years of strife and turmoil. Now, together, we shall destroy the Heartless, cast away the keyblades, and forever seal the corruption of Kingdom Hearts."

"...I'm sorry, I still don't get it," Emily says, annoyed, as she effortlessly breaks loose from the grasp and turns around to find the usual suspect: the girl in black, "Look, I've heard nothing but bad things about you and you're really creeping me out, so-"

"I'm Jamie, you dense dolt," the girl interrupts, her tone more exasperated than annoyed.

"...what?" Emily asks, taken aback by this sudden revelation. How is she even supposed to react to something like that? It just... does not follow...

"Come on," the girl in black chides, "Haven't you been paying attention to the visions so far?"

"You are not Jamie," Emily dismisses, frowning at the deceiver, "You don't act anything at all like her. She would just tell me right away and not string me along for months."

"If I told you right away, you wouldn't have believed me," the girl in black says with a mopey expression, "Besides, let's see _you_ get stuck in a casket for over 35,000 years and stay just the way you are."

"And that vision goes against what you say," Emily says, "She only just got into this universe."

"You really think everything you see is linear?" the girl continues, "Time is meaningless between the dimensions. I was sent here months after you, but arrived 36,196 years before you. Selacia's time loop couldn't happen if it was all linear. Come on, _think_: the oppressive empire? I showed you that vision for a reason."

"But there's an oppressive empire right now..." Emily comments, a thought popping in her mind, "...what can you tell me about blue and white?"

"Nevermind those self-important idiots," the girl dismisses, "They're small potatoes; just the latest rotation of the vicious circle. Ignore them. The real threat is the rampant Kingdom Hearts system and the creatures that feed from-"

"Just stop," Emily cuts in, "I don't want to spend even a second more watching your fake visions or listening to your lies. I want nothing more to do with you."

"...all this and you still won't believe me?" the girl mournfully drawls, turning around and walking away, "Would it help if I showed you my story after I got sent to this universe?"

"No," Emily flatly answers. Still, in spite of her simple, direct answer, the girl in black summons some kind of tangible darkness... or at least gives the appearance of such. This cloud of indeterminate material washes over the landscape, morphing it into some kind of high-tech city under a starry night. A motif of flat whites and greys of a charcoal nature dominate the towering skyscrapers, the only real color being the occasional glowing line of an unnatural gold energy.

"So I found myself flung to-" the girl in black continues.

"Stop," Emily interrupts, the rolling cloud of darkness dissipating with that one word. In fact, a rolling cloud of what appears to be tangible light ripples out in a 180 degree arc behind her, transforming the landscape into a calm meadow on a sunny day. The grass is swaying gently in the breeze and the sound of chirping birds fill the air; a real Arcadian ideal. As Emily looks herself over in surprise, the girl in black smiles and gives a couple golf claps.

"Now you're thinking with dreams," she says in an approving tone.

"Why won't you just go away?" Emily asks, her focus restored. The force of her voice alone sends a wave of the serene landscape crashing over the night city, a gust of wind ruffling the clothes of the black-clad girl in the process. Unfazed and undeterred, she tilts her head to a side and seems to will the city to start creeping back forward. She turns and starts walking down a highly detailed street forming on either side of her.

"Just hear me out," the girl asks, townspeople forming and populating the busy street, "So I-"

"GO AWAY!" Emily shouts at the top of her lungs, the serene landscape crashing the city apart and blasting the girl in black off her feet. In spite of the sheer violence of this act, the intruder doesn't let out so much as a peep as she crashes into the ground and rolls like a discarded rag doll across the grassy plain. The intangible morphing wave tries to claw its way over the black-clad girl, but the bottom third of a blacklight sphere repels all the tendrils of calm light from enveloping her form. As if forgetting basic physics, she hovers a meter upwards and lands back on her feet.

"You really want to fight me?" she asks in a tone mixing disappointment, condescension, and regret, "You have no idea how dangerous I am. You're so bold as to spurn my unconditional friendship and turn the so-called 'ancient destroyer' against you?"

"I'll take my chances," Emily spits, thrusting her palm forward to send another blast of serene energy at her opponent. However, this time, the girl in black holds up two fingers in front of her eyes and summons forth the front side of a deep violet sphere that shrugs off the assault with barely even a ripple in her flowing dress. The attack negated and the girl undamaged, drops of a tangible darkness spread out from under her feet and start morphing the landscape back into the dark city. Emily tries to send another wave of serenity, but outside of a loud rushing wind, nothing happens whatsoever.

"Do I have your attention now?" the girl in black sighs, bowing and shaking her head in disappointment, "I was-"

"**GET OUT OF MY HEAD!**" Emily shouts in a deafening reverb, rushing forward and summoning a simple sword as she thrusts the newly-formed weapon at her passive target. With barely any movement at all, the girl in black halts the blade in place with an energy disc at the tip of her left index and middle fingers. A violent cyclone envelops the two, yet in spite of the extensive fluttering and flapping of Emily's dress, the black-clad girl remains perfectly still and calm. No matter how forcefully Emily pushes all her weight into the tip of the blade, it doesn't budge so much as even a centimeter towards its unfazed mark.

With a curious tilt of the head and a glare colder than liquid nitrogen, the girl in black thrusts her other two fingers forward into Emily's midsection. This motion brings forth a burst of wind that hurls Emily backwards at a hundred kilometers an hour, the landscape morphing back into a city at a rapid rate in the process. Even as she bounces and scrapes across the harsh pavement, Emily brings herself right side up and plants her feet in a sliding skid that sends pavement up in sprays of gravel. As if responding to her defiance, the serene landscape fights back at its encroached borders and the asphalt around her gives way to grass.

Just as she passes the border between the battling landscapes, a strange thing seems to happen to her. Whereas she was once a generic girl wearing a generic aquamarine dress, everything about her changes to something mythical. Her plain straight hair unfolds into a pair of strawberry blonde tails wrapped in azure ribbons. Her simple cloth dress gives way to a flowing white cloak and mantle over a full set of radiant blue-tinted chainmail, everything accented by an azure trim and friendly-looking runic symbols. Not to be left behind by everything else, the sword shifts into a flowing set of crystals that almost appear as a cascade of waves. Radiant, beautiful, and yet ready to stand at the forefront of the forces of light.

"Really? You _seriously_ see yourself as a paragon of light?" the girl in black asks in a dismissive tone, "You're nothing so divine and you full well-"

"_**NO MORE!**_" Emily shouts in a righteous voice not her own, rushing forward once again in a radiant flurry of flowing white cloth and trailing azure energy from her sparkling crystal sword. Still unfazed, the girl in black raises her two fingers and summons forth the blacklight barrier from before, but unfortunately for her, it proves to be completely ineffective this time around. The magnificent weapon shatters the sphere into a million shards of dissipating energy, the blade slashing right through the dress and blasting the victim back at breakneck speed. The serene landscape practically obliterates the city in one fell swoop with this hit, leaving nothing but grassy meadows for the girl to tumble across to a gradual stop.

"You expect me to think of you so highly?" Emily shouts in defiance to her unresponsive opponent, swinging her sword in a wide arc into the ground. For a few seconds, it almost seems as though she really did take down such a powerful adversary in one hit, but that would be much too easy. The girl in black hovers back up onto her feet, glaring down at her torn dress with an expression mixing apathy and sorrow. With her outfit ruined and no doubt a liability in a melee brawl, she reaches within and tears it right off in one smooth motion.

As much as Emily might have truly believed in herself with that bold statement, the visage under the dress brings all the fear and self-doubt rushing right back. It's certainly not the outfit that causes this trepidation; oh, no. While the black sleeveless, legless, backless leather leotard might be borderline indecent in spite of her anemic musculature and flat chest, it's nothing compared to her lightly-charred, heavily-scarred chalk-white skin. One can almost see every last hit she took in all the thousands of battles leading up to her crystal imprisonment.

But there's one element that cannot be denied, one element that cements her inhuman presence: a pair of tattered, decaying black wings. Too big to be ignored and too small to be practical, they merely hang there and only seem to twitch involuntarily. Emily can only imagine how much the gashes and frayed feathered edges must hurt, but with so many other battle scars crowding away nearly all the healthy skin, they're probably the least of her pains.

And yet, neither the tattered body nor the torn wings hammer the danger into Emily's mind as well as the forming weapon at the girl's feet. Rising horizontally out of the streaming pieces of the very ground is an opulent, elaborate, onyx-handled, beryl-tipped spear large enough to effortlessly pierce through the hull of a tank. For all the suggestions and implications of her being a sorceress, it comes as a real shock that she would ever be one to wield a melee weapon larger than even herself.

"No," the girl in black says with no reluctance left in her voice, reaching her hand forward as the spear levitates upwards, "I. Don't. _Care_ what you think 'cause as long as it's about me, the best of us can find happiness in mi_i_i_i_isery."

Faced with her self-proclaimed 'guardian heartless angel' now pitted against her and slowly approaching with a harsh glare, Emily finds even the comfort of her idealized form of little use against such a fearsome entity. The calm meadow scenery bends and wilts as Emily's grip loosens, losing ground to decaying, crumbling city. Amidst all the pondering of her futile struggle and desires to wake from this not-so-harmless nightmare, one tiny little thought manages to overcome the rest: this is her dream and no matter her opposition, she still has control. All she has to do is exert it.

Her path set and resolve affirmed, Emily thrusts her free hand forward and launches several white twisting energy bolts at her enemy. Without breaking either pace or glare, the girl in black knocks aside each bolt with graceful twists of her lance. They don't even explode in solar bursts like imagined, but just peter out and vanish into the distance. Unswayed, Emily throws about a hundred of them all at once in a dazzling disregard for all known laws of particle physics, but the girl in black simply extends her spear and summons a blacklight shield that absorbs every last beam without even a flicker of resistance. So it's going to be melee that settles this, huh?

Confident that this emaciated fallen angel cannot possibly be able to hold up against a proper armed scuffle, Emily rushes forward with her best determined war face. The girl in black responds with a disinterested flick of the fingers that sends her own darkness-filled spiral beams forward, but without even thinking of it, Emily deflects the bolts with a white light barrier all her own. To think that her own subconscious is looking after her is a comforting thought and now that she knows that she's on equal footing with her adversary, all she has to do is crash through the oversized spear and rend this so-called 'ancient destroyer' limb from limb.

Emily attempts a lower feint leading into a decisive stab at the heart, but without even so much as shifting her eyes, the girl in black slams the sword right out of her hand into a stratospheric orbit. Emily barely has time to register the sheer strength and agility of this disarming before a follow-up thrust forces her to bend to a side. A swipe to the side forces her into a backwards bend not unlike a limbo game, but as impressive a dodge as it may be, this maneuver throws her off balance and she collapses onto her back. Things aren't looking so hot for her now.

Emily only gets about seven tenths of a second before her opponent's downward thrust requires a sideways roll. Several more rapid-fire thrusts narrowly miss her by millimeters, the last grazing her cloth trim just as she finally gets out of the black-clad girl's reach. It almost seems for a second that she'll be able to roll back onto her feet without problem, but before she even gets up on her knees, the girl in black hops with a slight flap of her battered wings and readies a downward thrust of the spear. Even as she goes in for the flashy kill, her face still shows a total lack of passion unbefitting a battle royale; must be really experienced to no longer even care.

As involuntary reflex brings her arms up to a futile guard, Emily unwittingly summons a blue and white checkered kite shield about a meter tall. While it certainly does look like a true unbreakable guard against this relentless assault, all it does it deflect the spear slightly to the side as it punctures right through with little resistance. Unimpressed, the girl in black simply sweeps the spear to the side and rips the shield right off of Emily's arm, the leather straps snapping like rubber bands. Luckily, Emily is given a couple seconds to back away as her opponent slams the useless shield into the ground and scrapes it off her polearm. A brief reprieve, to be certain, but a much needed one.

Back on her feet and steadily pacing away from her opponent, Emily reaches both hands forward and summons forth a pair of elegant blue and blue-tinted-silver short swords. Clearly, just one weapon is not nearly good enough to break the tenacious defense of the black-clad girl's effortless parries, so it's only logical she needs to attack from two angles. Thinking back to her dual-knife training, she decides the best course of action is to allow this fallen angel to make the first move so she can counter in mid-stroke. Now she just has to wait for her opponent to go in for the kill. Waiting, waiting...

"...you don't really think I'm going to let you do that, do you?" the girl in black sighs.

"Wha..." Emily responds, unsure if her plans really are leaking to the enemy; given that they're apparently battling in some kind of psychic space, it's entirely possible. Then again, it is kind of weird that they're fighting a battle of the minds by constraining themselves to-

Before much thought can be dedicated to this line, the black-winged girl rushes forward anyway with lance at the ready; she must have been talking about something else. Emily sidesteps the forward thrust at her midsection, stepping in and making a stab at her opponent's head. Her attack is predictably parried with an upwards twirl and sideways swipe, but unexpectedly, the girl in black deflects the simultaneous attempt at her waist with the other end of the spear. Unfazed, Emily resummons her lost weapon and twirls around for a stab at her enemy's winged back.

While this maneuver proves effective as she manages to draw a slight trickle of blood from a shoulder blade with her glancing graze, she most certainly didn't prepare for the girl in black to dig her spear vertically into the ground and use the makeshift pole as a support to dropkick Emily away. Even as the blow knocks all the wind out of her lungs, she still can't help but notice the odd twitching of the wing that escaped her wrath. The girl in black must feel it as well because in spite of the window of opportunity to rush over and impale Emily right where she lies, she instead reaches back and rubs a little blood onto her fingertips.

"You hurt me," the girl in black flatly states as she turns to face her attacker, staring at the crimson stain on her hand.

"You don't impress me," Emily responds, picking herself back up and resummoning the two short swords into a ready stance.

"Eh..." the girl in black apathetically shrugs with both shoulders and wings, flicking the blood onto the ground. In spite of this wound disproving her infallibility, she seems somehow less determined as she reaches back and yanks the spear out of the ground. Holding her polearm at a diagonal across her winged back, she deliberately walks a step a second with her guard apparently down. It's painfully obvious that she's baiting for an attack just like Emily before her, but even then, this stance seems unusually dangerous; what if her haste accidentally clips a wing?

After a couple seconds of uneasy backwards pacing, Emily decides to take the bait anyway and rushes in for the kill. Before she even gets three steps into her dash, the black-winged girl twirls the spear in a vertical arc that scrapes across the ground and launches a blacklight energy surge in its wake. Without so much as even missing a beat, Emily leaps into a drill-like head-long spiral with both blades forward. Very telegraphed and easy to counter, but rather than let Miss Black Wings slam the blades out of her hands, Emily retracts them just as the spear comes down to parry. Clever.

Without any delay, Emily plants a foot back on the ground and slashes both blades in an X outwards from the black-winged girl's heart. With her spear down and no time to react, the girl in black steps back just a little too late and ends up with two skin-deep gashes. Emily unrelentingly follows through with a step in and blades brought back inwards, but her opponent manages to get the spear up just in time for a horizontal block short of her shoulders. The surrounding, battling landscapes go into sheer chaotic overdrive as the two weapons meet, dust storms and splitting earthquakes circling around the two locked battlers. Even as all hell seems to break loose with this matching of strength, the locked gaze of the black-winged girl appears rather distant and disinterested. Certainly a cold mirror of the hot-blood of Emily's reckless stare.

Apparently sick of the standstill, the enigmatic girl takes one hand off her weapon and retracts it back to her side as her weakened grasp gradually brings the short swords down to her shoulders. Before the blades can cut any further than her outer sinew, she suddenly thrusts her free hand into Emily's chest and launches her backwards with a flash of blacklight energy that leaves a soft puff of smoke in its wake.

While a lesser person would be taken by surprise and left open to the follow-up attack, Emily naturally deflects the forward thrust to the side with one blade as she twists on her heel and stabs at her opponent's face with the other. While the black-winged girl does a pretty good job of holding back this one blade with a twirl of her polearm, Emily certainly planned on such a maneuver and twists around to deliver a stab at her stomach with the other. If not for the quick grab at the wrist that stops the blade within the leather leotard, this would have marked the end of the battle.

Locked in place with crossed arms and uneven standing, Emily takes a page from her enemy's book and violently kicks her away with a deafening blow. Staggered sideways by her fleeting grasp of the wrist and thrown off-balance by her spear flailing wildly out of her hand behind her, the girl in black can only watch in dull surprise as Emily leaps high into the air and brings both blades down like a hawk's talons on its prey. With no time to bring the spear up to parry, the girl in black does the only thing left in her arsenal of tricks: raise a futile energy shield that shatters immediately upon impact.

And yet, not only does the shield burst into a billion dissipating shards, so does the very fabric of reality itself. Both Emily and her target fall right through the shattered ground towards an abyss of nothingness, the former taken completely off-guard and drifting away as she tries to figure out what the hell just happened. Did she manage an attack so powerful, it completely destroyed the balance of her own psyche? If so, why does she not only feel just fine, but perhaps even more empowered and focused? Maybe rather than her own psyche, it's instead her enemy's that's been compromised? In fact, it would make a lot more sense for this to be a shared state...

As if acting to prove her wrong, the girl in black bursts with a flash of blacklight energy that envelops her body and lingers around her extremities. The dark radiance dissolves to unchanged hands and feet, but her wings extend to a much fuller, menacing span of at least two meters. Completely formed, properly articulated, and clearly under full control, they seem less a mark of active malice and more a mark of true moral ambiguity; certainly a sentiment echoed by her solemn face. After a few seconds of passively staring at her hands while flexing and fluttering her dark wings, she flaps them forward into a cupped shape and draws her spear back into her extended hand. A victorious pose worthy of only the grandest glory and triumph: how could plain-old Emily ever hope to compete?

With a snap twitch of the wings, the girl in black zooms towards Emily with spear at the ready. The latter barely has time to bring her blades in to parry the horizontal blow, but with no guiding appendages of her own, all it does is launch her backwards into a haphazard spin. Miss Black Wings effortlessly circles around Emily's axis and swoops in for another attempted skewer, the latter only barely mustering enough balance to deflect with her two crossed blades. Not like that maneuver offers her much in long term survival, with the girl in black smacking both short swords out of her hands. Looks like this rather odd fight ends right here and now.

The girl in black sends another thrust Emily's way, but misses by mere millimeters due to the latter's reflexive belly scrunch. Desperation overwhelming her and faced with perhaps her final opportunity to come out on top, she grabs the spear's shaft with both hands and holds on for dear life. It almost seems so obvious that she should have done this earlier, but at least the slight twitch of the black-winged girl's eyes betrays the notion that she never planned on such an outcome, either. Both can share in their obliviousness of such a straightforward maneuver.

As the black-clad girl jostles and wrestles with violent jolts and mighty flaps, Emily hopelessly kicks at her enemy with insufficient range and ineffective force. The two locked in a standstill and no end to the fall in sight, Emily goes calm as she realizes one very important fact: this is her dream and she is still in control. Maybe it's a shared dream and she can't will any changes upon her opponent, but nonetheless, she can exert at least enough control over her form and surroundings to make this plan work.

Since skydiving as a mere human does not come even close to cutting it, Emily obviously needs a new body up to the task. She closes her eyes and feels through her back and shoulders for those long-lost appendages of so many of Axel's simulations. Even with the forceful jerks and whips competing with the intense wind, she manages to filter out that tactile chatter and truly envision herself as that angelic champion of her deepest desires. Such an alluring figure, graceful, powerful, poised at the forefront of all that is just and right in this universe...

Suddenly, bright white light penetrates her eyelids as a silky smooth, empowering feeling envelops her body and engulfs her mind. This sensual feeling gathers and saturates into her hands and feet, her muscles tightening and grip strengthening as a whole new set of sensations form inside her back. The skin stretches and strains under the sheer pressure building within until it finally bursts apart in a gratifying contrast of liberating pain and invigorating bliss. That long-buried primal urge to grow beyond one's skin satiates itself as Emily bends and stretches at all the dozens of articulations and thousands of nerve endings. She has reclaimed that divine right she has always desired her all life and upon opening her eyes, she finds her enemy gazing with a subdued mixture of not only fear and surprise, but also a hint of satisfied admiration; almost as though everything was leading up to this one point.

"No," Emily softly says to her bemused onlooker, yanking both spear and opponent in with a mighty flap of her brilliant white wings and kicking her with so much might, even she feels the potent impact rattle her very bones. Taken by surprise and completely overpowered, the girl in black buckles to the blow and loses her grip on the weapon without so much as even a passing ripple of resistance. The force knocks her away at great speed as she rotates backwards and her limp wings drape over her shoulders and arms like the flames of a meteor on reentry. And to think she's supposed to be this highly feared ancient destroyer...

But Emily is not so confident to believe this one attack has secured her victory; of course not. Relegating the spear to one hand and twirling it to rest across her leg, she halts her fall with a deafening flap of her magnificent wings and thrusts her free hand forward palm-first. A powerful supernova of a flash erupts from below, with a city of glass and crystal spontaneously erecting itself from the newly formed pearlescent surface. Spires and domes circle around this massive skyscraper situated just below the falling dark angel, solidifying into a hundred layers of sheer shimmering beauty.

Certainly a short-lived beauty because with a thunderous series of crashes filling the air with billions of refracting grains of glass, the black-winged girl smashes through each layer in a brutal display of frailty and agony. Each impact tosses and flings her around like a rag doll, the shattered shards tearing at her body and ripping apart her wings in sprays of blood and black feathers. If not for all these months of mental harassment, Emily would almost feel sorry for the poor thing. Still, it's kind of unsettling how after a hundred floors of tearing glass, only the harsh backwards impact with the ground wrings the softest of pained grunts out of her.

But even with a hundred floors of glass and crystal battering the body of her nemesis, Emily knows better than to assume this to be the end. With a perfunctory backflip, she divebombs straight downwards at her prone, writhing opponent. Glass and crystal mist billows and spirals behind her as she cuts through the air like a guided missile, wings spread all the way to the side and her appropriated spear held forward. As she reaches speeds exceeding even that of a shooting star, all the black-clad girl manages with the combined strength of her arms and what remains of her wings is an arch of her back off the ground. All the easier to hit.

With unflinching resolve and a fiery focus, Emily impales the black-winged girl with the impact of a hundred million meteors. The sheer force of this attack sends a shockwave of epic proportions rippling through reality itself, utterly obliterating the remaining crystal structures and sending a thousand fissures through the ground. Even as the crystallized glass blasts away like a rolling dust storm and the ground pulsates with columns of the pearlescent crust rising in the aftermath, Emily feels just fine...in fact, she feels better than fine: she feels incredible. Is this the feeling of true power: one of sheer exhilaration?

So with that one reality shattering impact still echoing through the resonant air, Emily stands victorious with wings spread and feet defiantly planted upon her fallen enemy. Where there once was a proud and menacing dark angel, there is now only the battered shell of a thoroughly broken, scarred, and torn wretch of a girl. Emily finds solace and confidence in knowing that even when faced with a true terror of the universe, she is able to overcome her limits and defeat even the so-called 'ancient destroyer' with nothing more than her inner fortitude and belief in her superior morality. Amidst her pride and triumph, she only finally notices that her defeated foe is still yet alive.

"...feels good, doesn't it?" the girl in black weakly coughs, blood dripping from the corners of her mouth, "That feeling that you can do anything, achieve anything, _be_ anything. It is everything you have ever hoped for, isn't it?"

"Shut up," Emily curtly demands.

"You might spurn me..." the girl in black says with a warm but disappointed smile, "...and I might lash out in return, but you still have my undying love. Even as you cast me away and tear me to pieces, I am still so proud of you and everything you have achieved. You are everything I hoped for and so much more; so very much more. Together, side by side, mistress and knight, we could be invincible."

"No," Emily mutters with subdued hostility, "I want nothing from you; absolutely nothing. You lie to me; you _manipulate_ me. You used my guilt about Chou to try to force me to your side only for her to come out okay even without your so-called 'help'. You show me impossible, contradicting visions of my old world and claim to be my old best friend even as you act nothing like her. I refuse to believe you can offer anything but tainted promises to trick me into freeing you from your more-than-deserving coffin."

"I don't think you understand how much I've given you already," the girl disappointingly remarks, "I am the very reason you're here in this universe instead of rotting away as plain old Emily Tennenbaum under the oppressive heels of the close-minded neurotypicals. It is I and I alone that shelters you, nurtures you, protects you, empowers you, and keeps you alive through thick and thin. Without me, you would have died a hundred deaths, never met with the object of your misplaced admiration, never gone anywhere but to the nearest prison over an illegal immigration and firearms charge. I am everything that makes you more than mortal."

"I seriously doubt that," Emily coldly dismisses, "If you are so great, how did I defeat you?"

"Do you forget this is just a shared dream?" the girl in black chuckles, "The next time we'll meet will be in meatspace and since I have done nothing in this dream I could not do in person, it would be an understatement to say you'd be at my mercy."

"That time will never come," Emily declares, "I hold all six of your prisms and I and my friends will do _everything_ possible to prevent you from ever walking free again."

"We shall see," the girl in black says with a knowing smile, "In the mean time, I'm taking away everything I've ever given you. No more will you see visions of events that may come to pass; you shall be grounded in the present like every other mere mortal. No longer will you possess inherent skills in your profession; you shall retain only that which you have learned and developed on your own. No longer will you have any intuition but that which comes naturally; I shall retract my guiding hand. You shall be cast back to your old Asperger-afflicted self, still inhabiting that lithe and strong body but no longer balanced and coordinated as you once were. That which you take for granted, I have giveth and now, I taketh away. Your truth hurts worse than anything I could bring myself to do... to you."

"You don't intimidate me," Emily says, yanking the spear out of the girl's midsection and raising it high in the air, "Say goodnight."

"Oh, by the way..." the girl softly breathes, bringing two fingers up to meet the tip of the driving spear. With that seemingly innocuous, futile-looking motion, reality once again explodes with the rage of a supernova. Searing solar fires engulf Emily as the force launches her away, intense pain saturating to the very core. That primal urge that was once satisfied by her winged form protests as the feathered appendages burn away to nothing at an agonizingly slow, labored pace. She feels every last fiber and tendon in her extraordinary form cremate right along with the confidence she once possessed. It's not until every last trace of power and purity of form is gone that she finally lands upon the ground and slides across the smooth glassy surface to an inglorious stop.

After what feels like an eternity of writhing in the pain and loss of all that empowered her, Emily picks herself up to her knees and looks down to see the reflection of her naked old self upon the pearlescent ground. Imagine her surprise to gaze upon not the blue-haired, well-toned, perfect-skinned Kiko that has burned itself into her mental image, but instead the stringy brown-haired, bumpy-skinned, emaciated girl too pathetic for respect and admiration back on her cruel old world. Of all the things she had to witness in this abyss of her own psyche, just a reminder of the unworthy person she once was... nay, always has been proves to be the most crushing of all.

Just as the first tears splatter across the ground, some invisible force lifts Emily up and holds her upright and rigid several meters above the ground. It doesn't take long for her eyes to fixate upon the incoming shadowy figure floating gracefully over. Whereas the girl in black was battered and torn before, she is now back to her old vitality with even her signature dress adorning her once again. No longer are her wings visible now that her skin is fully covered, but the memory seems to linger in the tangible darkness pouring out from behind. With a disappointed expression just short of a scowl on her face, she stops just short of Emily and ominously pokes her in the forehead.

_I own you._

**

* * *

.

* * *

**

Grogginess seems to be the order of Emily's brand new day; a grogginess she hasn't felt in so long. That usual disorientation that follows a vivid dream overcomes her as she claws at the bedspread, unwilling to let that fleeting feeling of escape go. Nothing feels quite as warm and inviting as that cotton fabric when faced with the cold, hostile day ahead. Even in spite of the building pressure in her bladder, she would rather not budge even a centimeter from her safe haven.

But still, rise she must for nobody should spend her life in bed. Her vision blurs from the bleariness of her wet eyes, light stinging through the refracting liquid. All she can see is grey and brown, but she knows it's safe to roll out of bed as she wipes the sleep out of her eyes. After all, going to school thousands of times over her life has conditioned her to moving effortlessly through the room without stumbling across her possessions. Rubbing her eyes as she makes her way across the wooden floor, she opens them to find... some kind of antique gothic room with black wood, deep red velvet trim, and an antique clock showing 7:55. Wait, this isn't her room...

That's when it all comes rushing back to her like a burst dam; everything over the past eight months. The Heartless attack, the celestial transfer, her arrival, her first meeting with Riku, her admittance into the Academy, all the missions she partook, all the battles she fought, all the blood she lost, all the tears she shed. How could she possibly forget so much of her life? How could she possibly forget all the magic and wonder and revert so easily back to her mundane, depressing old life?

But then the memories catch up to that final dream and everything becomes obvious: that girl wasn't lying. She really must have held the key to Emily's mental faculties because now, that clarity she used to have is gone. Her spatial awareness is shot, her vision stings her eyes, and even standing in place requires active focus while switching the weight between her feet to not tumble over. She feels uncomfortable in her very own skin; how did she ever live this way before?

Still, what can she do but just carry on with her day? While so many troubles make her path murky, she would be worthless and weak to consider trying to find a way back into the good graces of her so-called 'guardian heartless angel'. No: she will adjust to this handicap like she would a changing battlefield and find her niche amongst her friends. If anything, they should be able to help her get back on her feet again; Axel is a genius biologist, after all. She only hopes whatever brought her back here also brought the final prism as well; it would be crushing to learn even her bold bluff back on the dream realm was little more than the meaningless vapor of a powerless zero.

Maneuvering her way around the densely packed den towards the bathroom, she somehow proves that girl right by stubbing her toe on the leg of a nearby couch. She yelps loudly in pain and stumbles as this unusually striking pain overwhelms her. Wait a second... she endured so much before, but stubbing her toe of all things manages to stagger her? Did the girl in black reset her pain threshold along with returning her brain back to its normal, broken state? There is so much she is going to have to relearn about herself before she'll be able to function amongst her bold, untroubled friends once again...

Finally finishing her epic trek to the bathroom, she instinctively flicks the faucet open and looks up into her reflection in the mirror. While she still beholds the same blue-haired, well-toned, perfect-skinned reflection of the past eight months in a tasteful set of pajamas, it seems almost like she's looking at somebody else. The only real familiarity she finds in this image is that instead of her usual graceful, poised self, she's slouched, droopy-eyed, and with a facial expression that inspires a general discomfort in its awkwardness. Is this how she has always carried herself in her old life? No wonder she got bullied relentlessly: she wants to beat even herself up now.

But no: she can't let such nasty thoughts get into her head. If she allows the belief in her worthlessness to take hold, she will only prove that terrible girl right. She just needs to adjust to the changes and work through this handicap. She forces her face into something presentable as she lathers up a washcloth, wiping away the oil and dirt that has to be building up on her skin as a song from her youth comes to mind. Sure, it was five years ago when she last believed in its sappy, melodramatic lyrics, but in this trying time, she's more than willing to take that plunge of faith once again.

"You are beautiful no matter what they say," Emily wistfully sings to herself as she rubs her cheek, "Words can't bring you down. You are beautiful in every single way..."

She loses momentum even on that lukewarm comfort of a song as her wiping reveals something under her bangs: a deep black and blue bruise right where that girl touched her. How in the... no. It means nothing. Absolutely nothing. No mythical glow or runic emblem or anything. While it makes little sense that her body would end up bruised even within that dream realm, she can't let it faze her. This is just another attempt to discourage her, but just as how words can't bring her down, neither can such a meaningless blemish. No; she'll just leave it alone and should anyone approach her over it, she'll just tell the truth... well, a version of it, anyway.

With that thought on her mind, she goes through the rest of her grooming and preening. Shower, shampoo, conditioner, brushing, shaving, and combing. Sure, she doesn't really need to do any of this due to some unknown force maintaining her appearance, but just doing these gestures encourages her to be everything she wants to be. Dressing herself up in the best blue jean and T-shirt combination available, she takes a few minutes to go through the morning stretching routine. Even if her coordination is shot and she finds herself messing up half the moves, she still needs to keep up her fitness, right?

With confidence restored and her best foot forward, Emily walks straight out of the room and down the elevator. She can already imagine some of the grief she's going to get for essentially kidnapping Chou and dragging her into a known ambush, but it all worked out, right? After stepping out of the elevator, it takes Emily a second to remember the location of the dining room: first door on the right in this long hallway. She stops just short of opening the door, adjusting her outfit and preening the final touches into her hair. Well, here goes...

Emily pushes the double doors open with a hand on each to find... nobody paying attention. Just as she remembers, there's a long black table with a white lace tablecloth and thick wooden chairs, but for whatever bizarre reason, there's now a television placed at the end. Riku and Kairi are both at their usual places absent-mindedly eating as they gaze upon the screen, but their apparent attitudes could not be any starker a contrast. Riku appears rather nonchalant and morose; almost betrayed. Kairi looks happy and content; not the fake kind she puts on around her friends, but the real, genuine kind that makes her almost radiant. What could possibly cause them to be so far apart from each other?

"...government funding for the library's A/V collection is expected to decrease up to 6%..." the television drones.

"Good morning," Emily greets, walking across the room to her usual seat and serving up some obligatory food.

"Good morning, Kiko," Riku mutters, unenthused, as he continues to stare at the television. Unlike her downbeat companion, Kairi turns with a warm smile to face Emily.

"Kiko!" Kairi jubilantly exclaims, both happy and relieved, "I'm so happy you're okay! Do you feel alright?"

"Yeah..." Emily half-lies, unwilling to break the mood just now. Nothing is a bigger killjoy than having to explain psychochemistry.

"We were so worried!" Kairi continues, Riku still pointedly ignoring both of them, "When you left us like that, we thought somebody kidnapped you guys. Then you two came back and you wouldn't wake up no matter what we did, but Axel said there was no reason for you to be out like that. Chou said something about pyr-ma-whatever and how it can knock you out, but she said it shouldn't have taken this long."

"...how long have I been asleep?" Emily asks, no longer needing to ask how she even got back in the first place.

"Four days," Kairi answers, "Are you sure you feel okay? You seem... I don't know... off."

"...it's something we all need to talk about," Emily admits, staring at her face with the reflection of her spoon, "But not yet. I've gone through so much and for now, I just want to relax."

"...market continues to rise to unprecedented heights as Daeh agencies purchase all surgical supplies available..." the television drones, reminding Emily of a topic that may unsettle her given recent events, but is nonetheless something she can't ignore.

"Did you go through with it?" Emily asks, turning to face Kairi. Without even a word, she leans slightly forward and extends a full, magnificent set of dark red wings matching her hair. Emily almost be impressed if that awful dream didn't forever associate such imagery with that terrible girl. For whatever reason, this action spurs Riku into turning just a bit further away while keeping his peripheral vision on the screen. Without even noticing Riku's visible discomfort, Kairi wordlessly retracts her wings seamlessly into her back with only the easily-missed textured spot appearing all that different from her red outfit. So she really was dedicated to the end...

"It's everything I've ever dreamt and so very much more," Kairi dreamily drawls, smiling wide with eyes closed.

"Eh..." Emily trails off, staring dejectedly at her food. If there was one comfort she held in spite of herself, it was her superiority to Kairi. Sure, she might have once believed vague magic and a 'princess of heart' designation afforded more importance, but deep down, it was always evident that seemingly-mundane physical prowess beats meager, impractical sorcery. Now, Kairi is truly comparable to her best friends and with that, Emily doesn't have much place amongst this social circle. The envy she feels almost disgusts her...

"...I'm very happy for you," Emily says out of obligation, mustering up her courage as she turns to face Riku, "I'm sorry, Riku."

"For what?" Riku answers without facing Emily.

"...you forgive me?" Emily asks, surprised.

"Not yet," Riku harshly responds, still facing away, "I just want to hear what _you_ think you did wrong first."

"Well..." Emily stalls, gathering her thoughts, "...I kidnapped Chou without even leaving a note to go headfirst into an ambush that could have killed us both. I didn't think it out at all and it was really reckless of me, but I just couldn't let you rush in and get yourself killed over a stupid prism."

"...wait, what?" Riku asks in total disbelief, peering at Emily from the corner of his eye, "Where did you get _that_ idea?"

"Didn't you get that vision from Yen Sid?" Emily asks, "The one telling you to go to Olympus Valley to get the last prism?"

"Yen Sid isn't a telepath," Riku dismisses, "And even if he was, I'm not receptive."

"That's what you told Simon," Emily maintains, completely confused why Riku is acting so coy, "That's how you knew it was a trap and decided to walk right into it... if you didn't know any of this, why were you rushing to meet Chou in the middle of the night?"

"I don't know if you've noticed," Riku sarcastically states, "But Chou has not been well since Zima. I just woke up in the middle of the night and felt like she could really use a friend."

"...she used me..." Emily mutters under her breath, realizing that even the so-called 'visions of the future' must have been fabrications all this time. Now she has no clue how much of it was true and how much was designed to force her into action, but then again, the truth is sometimes the most insidious weapon of all.

"But you know what?" Riku says, finally looking at Emily properly, "I forgive you. Maybe what you did was reckless and stupid, but you both came back just fine with not only the last prism, but Doctor Goldwater as well. If Mickey was right, you really might have just ended the entire war and saved billions of lives across the universe. You're a real hero... and if Mickey ever returns, filthy rich as well."

"...really?" Emily asks, stunned, "Goldwater is here?"

"She told us what happened back on Olympus," Riku explains, "For someone that's supposedly responsible for so many deaths, she's been real cooperative. She threw herself at our feet and practically _begged_ us to lock her up. She doesn't even care that she'll probably be banished to another dimension once Uina takes her back to UCoP to stand trial... although if she _isn't_ the reason blue and white has been destroying us so easily, there probably won't _be_ a UCoP to take her back to. Still... you did good work."

"...you're not joking?" Emily prods, still not buying this, "You really think I did the right thing?"

"Thinking about it," Riku admits, "You did exactly what Sora would have done: broke every rule and left us fretting for your safety only to come back with an incredible victory that makes up for it all."

"Thank you," Emily says, holding back tears of joy at finally earning the respect of her idol. All this time that he has kept his distance has made even this simple show of respect feel so unusual. Now that she has finally pierced that armor of disbelief and proved herself worthy of admiration, perhaps she can build a real friendship with Riku that will last a lifetime. And to think that girl wrecking her brain was going to bring her down... well, while she does have to explain that eventually, she's going to just keep it to herself for the time being.

"...statement from a company spokesman on the recall..." the television drones.

"You're not going to hide it from her, are you, Riku?" Kairi asks, concerned. For whatever reason, Riku seems honestly surprised by this statement; as though the fact that it's coming from Kairi throws him off-kilter.

"Oh, come on," Riku says, gazing right past Emily towards Kairi, "Let her have her guilt-free moment of glory."

"She needs to know," Kairi states, authoritative and yet a little gloomy. Riku starts to mouth a word, but after hanging for a second, apparently decides against it. With a sigh, he grabs the remote and starts rewinding through all the myriad news stories they have apparently recorded. Kind of weird how they all of the sudden get a TV in this room...

"I thought we didn't get television?" Emily asks, wanting something to break up the mood at least a little. She can just tell this is going to shatter everything.

"Axel was lying all this time about the 'communication blackout' caused by the black holes," Riku says with an air of knowing frustration, "I know, I know: Axel not being honest. What a shocker. Your antics forced him to at least come clean about it... okay, here we go."

"...in unfortunate breaking news," a female news anchor starts, "The search for former record tycoon and intergalactic political fugitive Simon Le Bon has ended in tragedy. Responding to reports of trespassing onto the quarantine world of Olympus, coalition forces arrived on the scene to find his body at the site of what appears to have been a pitched battle. Investigators currently have no leads as to what he was doing there or what killed him, but I think we speak for everyone when I say we've lost a great man. Known for his services during the recent Heartless wars, Simon Le Bon..."

"...I'm sorry, I-" Emily attempts, the news harrowing her to the very core.

"Stop," Riku interrupts, turning the television back to the current news, "Chou and Goldwater explained everything to us. You didn't force Simon to help; from what Chou said, it sounded like he rushed right in. When she saw that Heartless coming at you guys, she panicked and shifted back here. There was absolutely nothing you could have done to save him."

"But... he was there because of me..." Emily says, tears welling up in her eyes.

"Simon was a veteran of the wars," Riku explains, "He knew the risks we all take when we go on the battlefield and-"

A deafening slam startles Emily, everybody darting their heads towards the door. Walking in at a hurried pace with equally-determined facial expressions are Axel and Xion. While the latter looks pretty much the same as she always has, Axel seems unusually well-toned and sure-footed; quite a departure from his usual emaciated figure and careless slouch. Even then, what could possibly be going on to warrant such a hasty, rude entry?

"Oh, hey, Kiko," Axel says in a faked tone of appreciation that clashes with his entry, "Great timing on your recovery. You might have just saved us and not even know it."

"_Come on_, Axel," Riku harshly admonishes, "Can't you see that-"

"Not now," Axel harshly interrupts as he reaches the table, unplugging the television with a yank of the cord, "They're here."

"What the-" Riku attempts.

"Those blue and white guys," Axel clarifies, "They're here!"


	76. Ritalin

If there's one thing Emily can appreciate about Axel's total lack of social grace, it's the lax attitude that comes with it. Sure, Uina smuggled a whole bunch of military grade hardware into a hotel room, but does Axel seem to mind? Apparently not; in fact, he's more than happy to use said room as a base of operations in this new crisis that faces the group. Hell, it's probably for the better since they're going to need every last resource at their disposal if they're going to overcome the overpowering menace now threatening this last refuge of the universe.

Still, maybe he's just a little too lax about the situation. If there's one thing a leader shouldn't do, it's leading everybody to an unsecured room and heading off without anything resembling a time frame or a means of communication. Things certainly aren't looking too happy for Emily, Riku, and Kairi as they await the return of Axel and Xion; a return that may never come and they wouldn't know until the blue and white forces crash down the door or bomb the building to the ground. Not knowing anything is way worse than knowing all but the worst of dooms, after all.

"...what kind of force are we dealing with?" Kairi asks out of the blue. As if somebody is supposed to somehow divine that information.

"Hell if I know," Riku shrugs, gazing away from Kairi. Just as how they couldn't have looked further apart in mood back at breakfast, they still cannot look further apart now. While one would expect Riku to be psyched and ready for battle while Kairi would be considering the best hiding places, it almost seems to be the opposite. Kairi stands proud and resolute, stretching all her extremities and cycling through her various weapon combinations while Riku sits in a solitary chair with his head propped against his fist. To his credit, he looks less cowardly and more battle-wary; as though he really doesn't want to go back into the thick of it once again.

"Can't you sense the Heartless?" Kairi asks, practicing her backwards side-steps.

"Sort of," Riku answers, turning more as Kairi drifts into his field of vision, "Sora's the one that's really good at it. Right now, I don't really sense any. I know blue and white uses some kind of technique to mask their presence, but I don't even sense that right now. I don't think Axel is lying, so they must have only sent the human tech-knights we've heard so much about..."

"Is that bad?" Kairi asks, spinning 180 degrees on her heel and parrying an imaginary blow.

"Beats me," Riku shrugs, "I'm sure with your new-found phenomenal Intelligent Device power, you'll be able to easily trounce every last thing they send at you..."

While Emily was trying to deny it in her head before, she can't deny the obvious any longer: Riku is genuinely mad about Kairi now. Of course, the real question is what, specifically, has him bothered. Could it be jealousy? After all, Axel always did make sure to hammer in just how powerful the 'Evolving Arsenal' is compared to other Intelligent Devices... but then, why wouldn't Riku be more battle-eager as a result? Does he not care to prove her wrong? Of course, giving even a cursory thought makes it painfully obvious what his problem is: he does not trust Axel in the slightest and for Kairi to trust him so completely with both body and essence is nothing short of betrayal in his eyes. Certainly not a casual topic of conversation, however.

"What can you tell me, Kiko?" Kairi asks out of the blue once again.

"Wha?" Emily responds, confused. She can at least understand how Riku is supposed to know something, but her?

"You can see the future, right?" Kairi asks, gazing upon Emily with expectation in her eyes, "What does the future say about today?"

"It never worked that way," Emily admits, dreading the words about to come out of her mouth, "And even if it did, I don't have that ability any more."

"How did it work, then?" Kairi asks, apparently desperate for anything to latch onto. As though prodding on the mechanics are supposed to make her realize a new angle or otherwise change her answer...

"...yeah," Riku joins in, looking at Emily in such a way to keep Kairi out of his vision, "How _do_ you know you don't have it any more if it only ever came up once a month or so without any control?"

"Well..." Emily says, looking down at the floor as she softens her voice, "It turns out it was always just that girl in black feeding me information so we could gather the prisms to free her. I told her to go away, we fought, and she took away my precognition."

"See?" Riku chides, "That's the kind of thing you tell us _right away_ instead of waiting unt-"

The door slamming open startles everybody all at once, Emily dodging under the table as Riku and Kairi assume battle stances and draw their weapons. This state of panic doesn't last too long since all Emily has to see is Riku's expression change from determination to irritation to know exactly who is at the door.

"Yo, ladies!... and gentleman," Axel greets, his voice imitating an inappropriate tone of casualness, "You can put your weapons away. There aren't any troopers within half a kilometer of us."

As Riku and Kairi desummon their weapons and relax their guards, Emily emerges from under the table to find Axel and Xion each carrying four huge duffel bags under their arms. It seems they've already pilfered a few items from this errand for their own use because both are now wearing these extensive technological body suits. Appearing as mesh suits not unlike Emily's covered with pads of some kind of spinel-reminiscent crystal, they have a glow that seems to dispel the light rather than enhance it. Xion suit appears to be custom-made because it is fastened by vertical straps over the shoulders down to the waist; obviously to allow for unimpeded use of her wings. Both have helmets made entirely of this crystal, with tactical HUDs affixed to their heads like eye patches. Definitely looks much higher grade than anything Mickey's old army every employed.

"Where the hell have you been for the past hour?" Riku asks, just a little annoyed by the long delay.

"Hey, hey," Axel responds, his tone still casual as he and Xion start laying the bags out on the floor, "Let's see _you_ sneak through four kilometers of streets and buildings patrolled by over-equipped tech shocktroopers and their cyborg dogs while carrying all this heavy stuff half the way. Anyway, I have good news, bad news, more good news, and even more bad news. The good news is they didn't bring any Heartless; the bad news is they brought a mid-scout class invasion vessel and we've tracked at least forty unique life signals within the area."

"Only forty?" Kairi asks, her voice just bold enough to sound unusual coming from her, "That doesn't sound too bad."

"Still eight to one odds and these aren't exactly Shadows we're talking abut," Axel responds, unzipping a bag to reveal a full suit just like his own, "But luckily, that's where some more good news comes in: they're still beneath good old Xemnas Corp. in the tech department. Of course, no matter how superior our tech, that is _never_ an invitation to be sloppy and certainly not against these guys. They're pretty hardcore in their own right..."

"...and the last bit of bad news?" Riku prods, Axel apparently having lost his train of thought as he looks over the blue suit in his hands.

"Our tech is obviously the reason they're here," Axel continues after a short pause without looking up, "Sure, everything on the computers is encoded in quantum trinary and all my written notes use my special shorthand, but do we really want to count on them not breaking our encryption? Even then, these trigger-happy zealots are probably going to leave Darkside behind to clean up this planet when they think they're done, so we really, really, _really_ need to hurry before they finish the first data transfer. We can only count on them staying that long."

"How long is that?" Riku asks, apparently not quite believing Axel's urgency.

"I'd say maybe an hour or two," Axel answers, shoving the bag towards Kairi and opening another, "Guesstimate. I didn't get much time to check the server banks, but their transfer rate is maxed out and half the hard drives were active. I mean sure, they'd have to be total idiots to leave so fast without stealing as much hardware as possible, but they are kind of arrogant..."

"So... what now?" Riku asks after another short pause, "Are we just going to rush the ship?"

"If only it were so easy..." Axel wistfully responds while still not looking up, shoving the bag towards Riku and opening another, "You guys should probably start putting those suits on while we talk, by the way."

"What are these things, anyway?" Riku asks, pulling the top half of his suit out of the bag and eying it suspiciously.

"Combination of the Mark VI Hazard Suit, Mark III Tech Commando series, and the prototype Frontliner Assault we never got around to fielding," Axel responds without a care about his audience understanding any of it, shoving a bag at Emily and opening another to reveal some stash of computer hardware, "I made one for each of you... well, actually, I made two because I had to plan around whether or not you got wings and didn't want to have to go back to armor design. Anyway, they _were_ supposed to be my parting gifts once all this stuff with blue and white blew over, but I guess Christmas has arrived early for you guys."

"You didn't answer my question," Riku points out, reluctantly tossing his shirt off. With Kairi also willing to strip to get in her suit, Emily swallows her pride and joins them. Better now rather than when anyone that isn't a Nobody is paying attention.

"Blue and white are currently stationed above the main laboratory," Axel explains, looking over some kind of gopher-like robot the size of a shoe, "They've set up a five point force field extending about half a kilometer around the complex and over their ship. They must have some good connections because it's a prototype Xemnas Corp. scrapped due to instability. While it's not really that good of a force field, we can't just brute force through it because it could... potentially..."

"...yes?" Riku prods.

"...detonate-into-a-nuclear-fireball-that-will-destroy-everything-in-a-twenty-kilometer-radius," Axel quickly mutters as fast as possible, his voice returning to an uneasy optimism, "But don't let that worry you. I have some robots here that will make sure that doesn't happen. We just need to make sure we have all five access panels locked down before we shut down the system."

"...so, wait..." Riku starts, "You're telling me that a group that can destroy us so easily... is using such a dangerous, buggy system that could kill them and destroy all this invaluable tech so easily?"

"Their black market dealer probably omitted that little detail," Axel flatly states, "Anyway, their ship is pretty heavily armed, so taking it head on would be a bad idea even for Intelligent Device wielders like us... except Kiko, of course. Instead, we need to take the ship from the inside. Another reason we have to hurry is because while they transfer the data, they have to keep the cables and personnel lift tube locked in place. They must only have a skeleton crew right now, so if you guys can stand guard at the bottom, I can clear out and commandeer the ship. Anyone think they have a better plan?"

Of course, since nobody else knows jack about the situation, it's a given that the room falls silent. While the looming threat of such a mysterious enemy force weighs pretty heavily on her mind, for some reason, the ill-fit of this suit seems that much worse. Still, given a choice between chafing mesh and a meter-wide hole in her chest, she'd rather have the former. Takes her a second to figure out how to latch the helmet onto her collar... and with that one snap, everything all of the sudden re-adjusts its proportions to fit her as though it's her very own skin. Would have been nice if it adjusted along the way instead of upon completion...

"Well, if there are no objections..." Axel continues, pulling out a PDA and pointing it at Kairi's general direction, "They have five projectors set up at key towers. They only have two or three guards each, so if we surprise them at the same time, that part should be pretty easy. I'm going to have each of us take a tower and-"

"I can't go," Emily cuts in. She knows full well that during this transition period back to her old ungraceful self, being pitted against two or three tech-heavy shocktroopers is just a little beyond her ability. Everybody turns their attention to her, with Axel pointing his PDA at her as if it's a wand. After a few more awkward seconds of Axel looking back and forth from the device to Emily, he gives her a knowing look before putting it back down.

"Look," Axel says sternly, awkwardly frowning at Emily, "I know you're not on the same playing field as us, but we can't afford to waste time with one of us taking on two towers. We can't afford to risk an unattended control panel being tampered with and we definitely can't afford losing at least five minutes to secure two towers. Five minutes lets them regroup for an ambush and if they can get everybody back to the lift tube, they could easily hold us off until the data finishes transferring and they can go back into orbit: that happens and we're just screwed. You absolutely _have_ to take a tower."

"But-" Emily attempts.

"No buts," Axel dismisses, "I'm already giving you the easiest tower with only two guards, so buck up. Even without any real powers, you're still elite forces, right? Specialized in stealth assassination? I've seen you in the simulations for weeks and even without wings or device, you're definitely up for this. Use the surprise to your advantage and even if your guns can't get through their armor, just shove them off the ledge, attach the device, and hold them off until the shield's down. Xion can help you after. I'm more worried about Kairi than I am about you."

"No pressure..." Riku mutters under his breath. It's uncertain whether he's disappointed with Emily or Axel. Probably both.

"Anyway," Axel says, grabbing a bunch of the robot gopher things and affixing a pair to hooks on everybody's suits, "We're going to have to maintain radio silence until the first attack. I'm uploading a time table to all of your HUDs along with maps, navigation, and adaptive routing, so you won't have to worry about any of that. Just get to your tower, take control, and set your device. We can break silence after that. Any questions?"

Since Axel hasn't really given much new information about this situation, it's still a given that nobody raises any objection. Emily can't imagine how she's going to defeat highly-advanced tech knights without any knowledge of their capabilities, but what choice does she have? With her path set, she walks over to one of the standing luggage boxes and starts shuffling through the various firearms. Should she go with the assault rifle or the SMG? Range isn't going to be that big an issue, but the question is if it's better to go with more ammo or more technical proficiency...

"Well, then," Axel continues with a clap, "Time's a wastin'. Let's move!"

With orders set and equipment donned, Riku, Kairi, and Xion all head out the door with heavy footsteps muffled by some kind of damping material. Hardly a total stealth suit, but then again, total silence is the kind of thing that nobody should ever learn to rely upon. Deciding that skill will always trump volume, Emily grabs one of the assault rifles and stuffs an ammo belt with as many clips as will fit. With assault rifle slung over her chest and ammo belt across her hips, she finishes with two handguns around her thighs, two spare clips for each, and her trusty pair of knives on her back. Should hopefully be enough, but she can't shake the feeling that she's going to come up short.

Armed and about as ready as she can be, Emily starts towards the door. Axel must want to take the rear because he's still standing there for some reason. Just as she passes by, he holds up his arm and blocks her from leaving with the suit-on-suit contact making a muffled clack.

"Hold up there, cowgirl," Axel says, circling behind Emily and heading straight to one of the unopened bags. With a zip, he reveals none other than Twilight's Javelin, that energy gun of Uina's unfinished design, attached to some kind of harness by a multi-joint extending arm. Looks kind of like a Steadicam. With a set of clicks and snaps, Axel attaches the machine to Emily's back.

"Oh, yeah..." Emily says, reaching behind and swiveling the large gun in front, "I forgot about this."

"Uina's a genius, but he obviously didn't work out the kinks," Axel explains in a disinterested voice, heading back to another bag, "Once you start this baby up, it only has sixty seconds before it burns out. Use it if you have to, but only as a last resort and be sure to detach it with the buttons up front after... while we're at it, here are some stun grenades."

"Thanks," Emily says as Axel hooks a small section of belt onto her left side... now she can't help but wonder if Axel went through this room long before that solo adventure... whatever.

"So I guess you've lost your brain bug," Axel casually starts, heading back to the open bag and taking out a bunch of bottles full of pills, "Kind of a shame it was actively correcting your motor functions all this time, huh? She must have cared for you at least a little."

"Yeah..." Emily sighs with discomfort, swiveling the large gun back in place. Maybe the suit is working to assist her, but she doesn't even feel the weight of the weapon.

"We don't have a cure for your condition," Axel admits, pouring a few pills of each type into a paper cup, "Well, I mean... we _could_ technically rewire your brain to normal standards, but you'd probably... kind of... go insane. Not like we have such a luxury outside of my lab, anyway. Instead, I have a bunch of time-release muscle relaxants, balance equalizers, twitch reducers, and other stuff. I'm only _guessing_ what your brain chemistry can handle, but if you're worried you're going to go into shock or something, I suggest you take these. Up to you."

"Er..." Emily says, thinking back on all the bad experiences with crap such as Adderall®, Prozac®, and such, "...no, thanks."

"Well, then..." Axel says, haphazardly tossing the cup aside and bringing his visor down, "Not going to shove it down your throat. Anyway, just... calm down. We'll get through this just fine. You'll see."

"I hope so," Emily reluctantly responds, bringing her visor down as well. With that final click, a whole plethora of mission information pops up on her HUD, focusing primarily on a detailed blueprint marked with a green line running through the corridors. Must be her path.

"Alrighty, then," Axel says, giving Emily one last friendly slap to the shoulder, "Let's move!"


	77. Space Dementia

For all their ethical transgression and hostile intent, one cannot deny that Xemnas Corp. really was a technological force to be reckoned. Maybe it's because they were so willing to throw away morality and embrace such underhanded tactics as deceitful public testing, corporate espionage, and throwing around their economic weight that allowed them to prosper, but at the end of the day, they produced incredible results. While Emily may have once been doubtful about her ability to partake in this resistance, the sheer power, flexibility, and ergonomics of this suit fill her with confidence. She almost feels like she can take on the universe.

Still, as her nagging computerized guide is quick and frequent to remind, she is not nearly as powerful as her suit makes her feel. Not only does it already steer her as far away from patrols as possible, it also makes sure to remind her that yes, there are, in fact, some enemies only three hundred meters away.

"Warning: three enemy life signals detected two hundred ninety meters north-north-east heading away," reminds the dulcet voice for the fourth time in fifteen seconds. As if a map at the corner of her vision flashing with red exclamation marks isn't good enough...

"Computer," Emily whispers, planting her back against the alley wall perpendicular to a nearby street, "Disable audio warnings."

"Cannot perform that action," the voice responds. Well, it was worth a shot. With a patrol on the nearby street, Emily decides to be even more cautious than her paranoid computer guide and peeks around the corner very slowly and tenaciously. Sure enough, there are two fully-armored blue and white troopers escorting what appears to be some kind of grotesquely huge mutant wolf decked out in cybernetic attachments. Without any input of her own, her visor zooms in to a close-up of the patrol, allowing her to get a detailed view of the cloth trim and capes adorning the metallic suits. The screen then 'helpfully' overlays large blinking red text reading 'avoid these'.

Confident that only a total idiot could fail to sneak across the fifteen meter wide street while these people are distant and looking the opposite direction, Emily trots across with only the most cursory attention paid to stealth. Her target is only a kilometer away and with nothing but clean alleyways and side streets to go, it's only best for her to hurry right along. Still a good eleven minutes before show time, but one does not dally around when the fate of their life and friends hangs in the balance. Forced as she may be in her role, she damn well better fulfill it.

An uneventful couple of alleyways bring Emily to the shadow of a ten story brick building. An intense teal radiance pours out from beside the building, sparks and flickers of trailing energy occasionally lashing out from what appears to be a solid wall of light just ahead of the tower. Even without a direct view of the force field, she can tell that it must be unstable. No way this would be considered military-grade for any but the most reckless of lunatic fringe terrorist groups... just like these guys. Funny how that works out.

Already too experienced to simply walk right out into the open, Emily backs into the nearby wall and glances up at the top floor of the building. Already sensing her intent, the computerized visor switches to thermal and confirms the presence of two tech troopers standing on the far side of the roof. Just in front of them is some kind of machine about the same height with heat ratings off the scale, lines that must be pipes or very thick wiring snaking out like the veins of a cancerous growth. Obviously the generator that brings Emily to this forsaken place. Well, it's about as clear as it's going to get.

With assault rifle at the ready, Emily dashes across the clearing straight to the nearest door in her vision. The suit proves itself useful once again by detecting some kind of trap around the frame, redirecting her path to an open window only a dozen meters to a side. Should have been obvious to think of the possibility of traps at the perimeter, but Axel apparently set these suits up to correct such human errors before they occur. With about as much grace and mobility that a hundred pound suit can offer, she slips through the open window.

"Scanning: please hold," intrudes the artificial intelligence with an abrupt set of red flashing lights, box outlines appearing all over her vision as traps are detected. Almost predictably, every major hallway and stairway is utterly littered with unspecified traps and other detectors, but oddly enough, one pathway tucked in a corner is left completely alone. There's probably a good reason for this: friendly-fire insurance, maybe? Or they were just simply short on devices and simply had to make do with the most obvious paths? Still a boon for this desperate mission, though.

Emily sidles through the sparse corridors of this apparent apartment complex, the occasional puff of dust revealing a severe neglect extending beyond the approximate date of evacuation. Even though the building has clearly been left to its own decay, there are still lights flickering with an odd rhythm. Probably some side-effect of having a force field generator so close by; even the slightest flicker is encroaching the computerized visor the further up Emily climbs this empty stairwell. Nothing too serious, though, and just as she reaches the door to the roof, it seems to all but vanish. Who knows what's up with that?

"Please hold: two minutes thirty three seconds until official engagement," interrupts that irritating computer voice as Emily sneaks through the doorway, red flashing lights going off all over her visor. Through the constant reminders treating her as though she's just some impulsive little child, she sees all sorts of outdoor furniture and small domed structures almost appearing as brick umbrellas supported by thick pillars. Even if she wanted to rush in right then and there, the intrusion of a full screen grid map and a hovering window showing the thermal images of her two targets completely block out her vision. While she would expect them to be masked and focused, they instead appear to have their visors up and are talking out loud about something just a little too casual.

"...had to buy new stretch suits for Addy," the one of the left continues, "She's growing up so fast, you know? Just five months old and already twenty two pounds. I can't wait to finally see her in person."

"I'm so jealous of you," the one of the right responds in a dreamy tone, "You have a wife and kid to go back to once we get out of this chickenchit outfit. Me? I've got nothin'."

"Don't say that, Jake," the one of the left says with a reassuring pat on the shoulder, "You've got Amanda, right? How's that working out?"

"We had only been goin' out for a month," the one apparently named Jake answers, "She never answered any of my emails even in the first month. I think my ass is as good as dumped and her ass is more than happy to find somebody else."

"Think on the bright side," the unnamed one reassures, "Just a few more months to the end of this damn contract and that's it. UCoP is so close to falling that we won't even have to _do_ anything for most of that time. Knowing the matriarchy, we'll just some cozy guard jobs against insurgents on some backwater and we'll be home with a huge pension and some prime real estate. You can find yourself a real girl then."

"I just can't wait," Jake continues, "At first, I thought it was fun. 'Look at me! I am your faceless, nameless nightmare! We are legion!' But the more I've seen, the more I think these people are just stark ravin' _insane_. Come on, 'the matriarchy'? What do they think they are? Witches? Not like I think there's a single woman in this army because it's been a total sausage fest everywhere I've seen."

"What about that one girl?" not Jake asks in an almost-joking tone, "Miss Greenypants."

"She's totally a guy and you know it," Jake dismisses, "Regardless, I am scared to hell of how they throw Heartless and Darkside at everything. Do we really _need_ to keep a dozen Darkside bombs on every single ship?"

"Do _you_ want to approach 'the matriarchy'?" the other guy chides, "Just keep your hea-"

"Attack in ten... nine... eight..." cuts in the artificial intelligence, visor returning to a forward view as two arrows with distance and rotation degrees pop up on the side of the field of vision. Emily takes some solace in the casualness of that conversation: they can't possibly be too tough if they're that lax. Shouldn't be too hard to take them down. With assault rifle at the ready, she turns the corner and starts a quiet jog along the wall. Her visor is kind enough to keep thermal outlines of her opponents as though she's running a wallhack in some first person shooter. With advantages like these, all she has to do is just have to get past this rectangular roof access point and gun these two invaders down before they can even react.

"Eight o'clock," the one that isn't Jake flatly states, both of them routinely and simultaneously dragging their visors down with one hand while spinning on their heels with rifles at the ready. Even with Emily's instinctive rush upon this detection, she only manages to get maybe four easily-deflected rounds out before the two loose their potshots of searing white bursts of energy in her direction. How did they even know she was there?

Without the initiative and with these dangerous bolts nearing closer by the millisecond, Emily gives up any pretense of accuracy as she rushes towards a nearby support pillar. Two steps before reaching her makeshift barrier, a couple shots meet their mark and jolt the hardened suit with deafeningly loud crashes. Flashing red warnings reminding Emily that yes, she has taken damage almost distract her enough to spell her doom, but she manages to get to her safe spot all the same. That sense of security doesn't even last half a second as two bursts pierce right through the pillar like needles through paper, shattering what remains of the armor on her right shoulder. How in the...

"Cease fire!" the one not Jake loudly cuts in with voice muffled, three bolts of energy missing Emily in a sweep to the side, "She's on the list!"

"Really?" Jake says with a similarly muffled voice, the soft ticks of suited footsteps underlying his voice, "How can you even tell?"

"I actually read the whole briefing," not Jake answers, two successive clacks of some kind ringing out, "It's a good habit, you know?"

"Oh, you with your actually caring and crap," Jake sarcastically quips, "Should we get back on the circuit?"

"Come on," not Jake quips back, "It's two against her and we didn't even feel those hits. I think we'll be just fine. Besides, our headsets got shorted by the flux, remember? Plausible deniability, mofo: do you speak it?"

As the two go silent with those words, Emily flattens herself closer to the pillar and looks over her damages. Through the grisly red warnings on her visor, she's able to see the assault rifle now has a sloppily melted hole right in the center just short of snapping the thing in half. Well, so much for that weapon. As she tosses the useless hunk of metal away, a sharp pain overwhelms her as something cuts into her arm. Doesn't take long for her to figure out that it's the jagged edges of what remains of her suit's right arm. Since it's basically useless at this point, she detaches that section of the suit and tosses it away, that sharp bits leaving a painful gash as it slides off. Well, whatever it takes...

"G-17 with kinetics?" Jake asks out of the blue.

"Nah," not Jake counters, his voice now pretty far to the side from his friend, "Hey, Miss! It's your lucky day! We'd normally just splatter your brains through your flimsy cover, but the matriarchy wants you alive! We have no clue why, but they do! If you just throw away the rest of your weapons and come out with your hands behind your head, we promise we won't shoot you!"

"You promise," Jake comments dryly, "I don't promise."

"You're not helping," not Jake counters with a repressed snicker.

"Three minutes to joint shield deactivation," the artificial intelligence oh-so-helpfully reminds Emily, its voice crackling with static. Nice to know that as these two hunters continue to circle her like a fox trapped in a hole, she can be reminded of how she's failing her vital objective. Without any more delay, she grabs a pistol from her side and chambers a round with a pull of the slide. Weapon at the ready, she flattens herself back against the pillar with gun just at the tip of the corner.

"I don't think she's going to give in," Jake says with a condescending laugh.

"Your peashooter isn't going to save you now, Miss!" not Jake yells at Emily, also holding back his laughter. She doesn't find it surprising in the slightest that they can see through her pillar: if one of those shots hadn't apparently compromised her 360 degree camera system, she'd be able to see them just the same. Such a shame...

"Can I shoot it out of her hand?" Jake asks in a slightly giddy voice, a loud clack resonating through the air.

"One piece, Jake," not Jake sternly reminds.

"Buzzkill," Jake mutters, a second clack ringing out. Another tense few seconds go by as Emily ponders her actions. How the hell is she going to get out of this one? She's stuck here with crappy pistols, probably-useless stun grenades, and no more mad skills from that connection with the girl in black. Her opponents are both surprisingly competent, well-armed, and have the good sense to distance themselves on either side of her. Still, there must be a way she can come out on top...

"Two minutes to joint shield activation: please hurry," the staticy voice complains once again. Nice of it to remind her of her uselessness, but not offer any solution to this problem.

"I think we can nail two birds with one stone here!" not Jake says in a falsely jubilant tone towards his friend, "Maybe you can hook up with her?"

"Hell, no," Jake responds with irritation.

"Hey, Miss!" not Jake calls out to Emily, "My friend thinks you're very attractive and would like to go out with you! Come out and talk with him!"

"Oh, shut up," Jake says through a repressed snicker. Almost seems like he hates how he finds this at least a little funny.

"Ninety seconds," announces that voice again. Could it possibly be any less helpful? With a choice between a slim chance of victory rushing in or a guaranteed failure waiting, Emily grabs a grenade with her free hand and flicks off the safety. Her visor even helpfully changes to some kind of red tint, some text reading 'stun grenade filter' popping up in the corner. All or nothing now...

"I see movement!" not Jake helpfully narrates. With a twirl on her heels, Emily lobs the grenade towards the approximate center between the two. She can't afford to take the chance of hitting only one: they're way too accurate to not go for both.

"Grenade!" Jake calls out. With head away and looking downward, Emily rushes out just as the bright explosion flares out with a deafening high pitch noise. She immediately yanks her vision towards the target on her far left, catching a glimpse of him just recovering from the stun grenade in practically no time at all. Figures. Still more than a few paces away and with her opponent readying his response, Emily quickly fires a few shots at the rifle that knocks his aim just far enough off-course to keep her safe. With the near-miss of some kind of sonic wave of distortion ahead of her reminding her of her vulnerability, she sprints with all her might while rapidly firing to try and keep her opponent occupied. Just a little more...

Luck once again shines Emily's way as she just barely manages to rip the rifle out of this guy's arms and yank him into human shield position to absorb another wave of sonic distortion. The sheer force of the impact knocks both of them back at a distressingly fast speed, but through sheer force of will alone, Emily manages to stay on her feet as they skid across the stonework surface. Coming to a complete stop with no incident or lasting damage, Emily turns towards the other trooper to find that even he seems impressed. He certainly looks pretty reluctant to take another shot...

"Sixty seconds..." intrudes that voice again. Since she obviously doesn't have any time left to spare, Emily lifts her dazzled shield off his feet and dashes about as fast as the two hundred pound limp body will allow. At least Xemnas Corp. technology can apparently keep the hydraulics or whatever assisting her even with all this damage. With the last standing trooper apparently too apprehensive to try anything but back away, even that stalling maneuver comes up short as he hits the side rail. Not a whole lot left for him to do now.

In spite of all the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that this blue and white menace prides itself on instilling, the reality becomes pretty clear as Emily slams into the other trooper with his buddy as battering ram. The metal railing bends and snaps under the combined weight and force of these three armored people, the victim barely rooting himself on the side of the building. Thinking fast, Emily jabs the pistol under the cloth chin of this guy's helmet and fires, a satisfying splortch and red spray from below more than confirming the kill. She almost bowls over the side along with the dead body, but manages to stop herself with heels right on the edge. Close call...

"Thirty seconds..." reminds the voice

"Please..." the limp soldier weakly moans, "I have a fam-"

Without even the slightest hesitation, Emily splatters this guy's brain all over the interior of his helmet. When there's this little time and this much unknown about the capabilities of these troopers, one does not risk a prisoner. Dropping the body off the side of the building, she dashes over to the computer console and slams one of the robotic gophers on top. Just as ordered and with twelve seconds still on the clock. How very dramatic...

"Objective complete: please hold for further orders," the computerized voice says as the gopher robot burrows right through the keypad and wraps itself in wires. Worrisome sparks fly out as a loud crackling noise rings through the air, the monitor going haywire with unreadable text and distortion. In spite of the chaos of all this reckless tearing, the shield does, in fact, go down without incident outside of a thunderous clap that, surprisingly enough, doesn't even faze Emily in the slightest. It almost comes across as comical to see a simple 'process complete' in white text on a black background adorning the monitor. All that and they couldn't program a graphic?

"Good job, everyone," Axel's voice says through a slight static in Emily's headphones, "Report in."

"Xion, reporting in," Xion says in a monotone.

"Riku, reporting in," Riku says with voice weary.

"Kairi, reporting in," Kairi says in a voice at the crash of an adrenaline rush.

"Kiko, reporting in," Emily obligingly echoes as she walks to the nearby assault rifle. Before she even fully reaches out to pick it up, her computerized visor warns her away with dire red exclamation marks and text claiming 'lethal bio-ident faildeadly'. As if she'd be so lucky as to procure a proper new weapon on site... suddenly, it dawns on Emily that she had a gigantic gun on her back all this time. How completely and utterly stupid of her to forget. Now this is exactly why she's no longer fit to serve alongside Riku and company... if she was ever fit to do so in the first place, anyway. She swings it ahead and checks it over to find that through some miracle, it came out of that encounter unscathed. She could have sworn she felt at least one hit in the back, but apparently not...

"...report in, Kiko?" Axel asks. Didn't he hear her before?

"I'm okay," Emily starts, swinging the gun back in place, "I took some hits, but I came out okay. Lost my assault rifle, but I didn't have to use the... er... the big gun... Twilight's Javelin. Going to... going to head to the rendezvous."

"Xion, go check on Kiko," Axel orders, apparently not hearing a single word Emily said, "Everyone else to the rendezvous."

Obviously, the microphone isn't working. Well, even if the suit failed to keep its communications safe, at least it performed an admirable job keeping her safe. Since the computer also isn't updating its maps or objectives, she only hopes she knows the city well enough to bluff her way to the lab and-

Before she even gets a chance to walk past the first set of pillars, two troopers and a cybernetic dog burst around the corners of the rectangular roof access point. How the hell did they manage to get up to the roof so fast? Just as both of the humans fire those sonic distortion rounds, Emily ducks behind a pillar with a pistol at the ready. She doesn't even get a chance to collect her thoughts as the rapid tacks of the grotesque cyborg canine's paws upon the stone ground gives her maybe a second's notice before the inevitable attack. Certainly do or die time now.

With as much speed as she can muster, Emily blindly lobs a stun grenade towards the troopers as she runs out of cover. Just a bit lucky her suit still manages to filter it out, but even as it buys her the time she needs from the troopers to rush towards what appears to be another roof access point, it certainly does absolute jack to stop the half ton canine abomination from smashing right through her old pillar. The adrenaline gushing through Emily's veins allows her just enough coordination to run forward and fire backwards, but the dog doesn't even flinch as it bites the gun right out of her hand. Try as she might to dodge the dog's next move, she finds it much too fast and ends up pinned under its massive weight with its grotesque maw breathing hot, rancid air straight into her helmet. Game over...

"Surrender quietly and you will not be harmed," booms a masculine voice from one of the two approaching troopers. While Emily still has no clue what the hell they could possibly want with her, the realization that Xion is inbound gives her every reason not to surrender quietly. Perhaps if she wiggles her a little to the left, she can slip an arm out from under the paws, quick-draw the other gun, unload some rounds into the exposed belly of this beast, roll it over, and use it for cover? Can't be too much worse an idea than doing absolutely nothing and praying backup arrives on time...

"**YOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU~U~U~U~U~U~U~U~U~U~U~U**..." shouts an all-too-familiar raspy voice, an unnatural digital distortion warping the last few seconds. Even without visible faces or basic human characteristics, Emily can almost see total bafflement in the way the two troopers and their oversized dog turn their heads towards the source. As two white lasers strafe right through the two troopers before they can even finish raising their guns, Emily wiggles, draws, shoots, and kicks herself away just before a third finishes off the bastardization of science that once stood upon her. Not like she's all that much less screwed now...

Still, that corrupted astronaut known as Cenari fails to deliver that fourth shot as he zooms overhead, voluminous white smoke trailing behind like the pollution of a corrupt factory. A quick glance of his circular bank is all that Emily needs to make her run with all the combined power of muscle and hydraulic suit-assistance towards her best bet for cover: the roof access point. Shame the door is on the side, but she'll take what she can get. Even then, she's smart enough to realize that as suicidal as staying on the roof any longer might be, she needs to at least goad him into another overshot strafing run before she can get far enough inside for safety. If it proves easy enough, it might even make more sense to just stall him and wait for Xion...

"**FINALLY!**" Cenari's voice explodes, the ground trembling slightly from the sheer volume and bass, "**You may have evaded me all this time as you hid everywhere, ruling by secrecy, feeding the hex, but I have found you! You shall no longer bring corruption to all that you touch for I was born to destroy you! You must pay for your crimes against the universe and only when I proclaim eternal victory can I mend the broken pieces of my life!**"

What a senselessly ludicrous speech. Emily almost wants to kick herself for not taking the opportunity of that rambling monologue to run away, but all it takes is a close call from a barrage of lasers with just one peak around the corner to prove herself right. That quick glimpse reveals that Cenari is now just casually hovering towards her. All that urgency in his proclamations but he can't be bothered to just stomp-land within a few meters and run the rest of the way? He must really hold her in a lot higher regard than she really deserves...

Just as Emily holsters her gun and starts towards the other side of the rectangular outcropping, another challenger appears over the horizon. With black wings the shade of a void contrasted by an aquamarine crystal sword loose in her hand like the ocean, she flies about as fast as her hundred pound dark blue suit allows her. She's certainly really bold to soar through the open skies when there are so many chances of being unceremoniously shot down: she must know quite a bit more about the situation than her enemies.

Urgency suddenly returns as Cenari rocket-slides around the corner, chunks of stone spraying up to make way for his rooted feet as he sweeps his lasers at chest height. Telegraphed enough for Emily to duck underneath as she dodges around the corner, but still too fast and lithe for her to even attempt a potshot. Not like she really expects her wimpy pistol to do a whole lot: this is the guy that apparently recovered from a heavy anti-vehicle round, after all. At least his total lack of anything resembling a sane motive or professional tactics will probably seal his defeat at Xion's hands.

On that thought, Xion yanks herself upright as she lobs several fireballs from a few hundred meters away. Before they even get past Emily's awkward field of vision from this corner, several quick laser bursts shoot the spheres of destruction down. As another barrage forces Xion to evade and parry in a graceful display of aerial acrobatics, the loud burst of jet flames and pouring of white smoke across the ground signalling a definite change of targets. To think that somebody that was so single-minded in his inexplicable desire for the destruction of 'the empress' could be distracted from his task for even a second.

"I've got him," says Xion's monotonous voice through the communication system, "Get out of here."

"**I won't let your harpy crony stop me, empress!**" Cenari shouts in his usual hammy fashion, jetting towards Xion with arms held forward. If there was ever a chance for Emily to escape, it's now. Keeping one eye on the two aerial opponents as she reluctantly heads back around the corner, Emily runs towards the door to her salvation. If only she could help take down this constant astronomical menace, but again, a pistol isn't going to do jack. She'll just have to run through this door...

...which won't budge. Great. Absolutely fantastic. With the two airborne champions now engaged in brutal melee combat, Emily is forced to figure out a way through this steel door. She's already smart enough to know that shooting the lock won't do a whole lot but risk her life to a possible ricochet, so there's only one thing left to do: bash it down. Not the most glamorous action, but since her other option is to run to the other end of the building in plain view, it's all she's got. With arm held close to her side, she backs up a little and dashes shoulder-first into the door... to about the worst outcome possible.

"Warning: suit compromised," warns the computerized voice, an outline of the suit with one arm missing and the other flashing red appearing on the screen. Not like she even needs this information as the sudden detachment of this armor nearly dislocates her wrist on the way down. To think it was held on by that little and all it took was a single slam against a stubborn metal door that is only just a little dinged at the impact point. Well, at least she's symmetrical now.

A glance over to the melee dogfight of sorts doesn't do a whole lot to lift Emily's mood. Sure, Xion seems to have slashed away some of Cenari's suit, but whatever brownish-grey material is covering the arms must be harder to destroy than even the keyblade. His jetpack system certainly seems a lot more agile than Xion's dark wings, the latter forced into a counter-intuitive flutter with every blow that the former parries with only his forearm. One particularly awkward slash opens her up to a brutal punch to the head, her balance lost as the helmet tears right off the suit. That's gotta leave a mark.

With Xion struggling to regain her composure as she glides haphazardly through the streets, Cenari's singular focus returns as he catches Emily's gaze. The expression on his burnt, twisted face seems to catch ablaze in sync with his sudden jet burst, spinning himself to a horizontal angle and blasting straight towards Emily with fists held forward. Doesn't take a whole lot of thought on Emily's part to inspire her to dash backwards and zip around the roof access point just in time to avoid his reckless crash right through the corner, dozens of smashed bricks vanishing in the white smoke trail of his jets. Close...

In a surprise moment of catlike agility, Cenari kicks himself out of his crater and just barely misses Emily with a jet-assisted shoulder bash that caves in the nearby wall. The bricks showering upon him does absolutely nothing to stall his follow-up clothesline swipe, grabbing and ripping the helmet right off of Emily's head. As if unable to notice his target still backing away, Cenari remains embedded in place for a few seconds as he crushes the empty helmet in his grasp like a flimsy beer can. Certainly a breather and it's great that the suit was apparently designed with this possibility in mind, but this only further cements just how badly she needs to get away.

With no more helmet to crush, Cenari slams another fist to the side to pop himself out. With Emily out in a relative clearing a good couple dozen meters away from either roof access or other cover, it definitely makes his next move an inevitability. Since she's smart enough to realize that there's basically no way she's going to outrun his rocket charge, she drifts to a stop and turns to face her attacker with muscles tense. With a toss of the crushed helmet to the side and a few angry steps forward, Cenari bursts towards his target with his open hands ready for mutilation: time for Emily to do her best soccer goalie dive and hope she makes the cut.

Sadly, it appears she's not going to challenge Gordon Banks in the history books any time soon as Cenari sees right through her ploy and immediately slants to adjust for her sideways leap. Just as the realization of this hits Emily, none other than Xion swoops in and hits Cenari barely far enough off-course to spare Emily of little more than a soft brush of the black wings. The two hurtling brawlers tumble over each other before slamming with Cenari's back into the wall of the roof access, a brutal punch to the chest launching Xion right back at Emily. It's only by lithe acrobatics that merely brings her a meter or two away from a clumsy collision.

"Why are you still here?" Xion asks in characteristic monotone over her shoulder, folding her wings flush into her back, "Go join the others."

"I'm trying..." Emily sighs, backing away slowly as Xion tenaciously steps towards her emerging opponent. Now here's someone that upholds the kind of ideals that of which Emily falls so short. A real rough and tumble girl of understated strength, her anemic, frail shell betraying her prodigious capability. Her serious expression defies her mussed black hair and fractured armor, the damage only further cementing her commanding presence. Unfortunately, it also dawns on Emily how superficially similar Xion appears to none other than the girl in black; perhaps there is a lingering respect in spite of all that has happened?

Still, now is not the time for Emily to hover around admiring her savior. Just as she dashes a few meters away from her protector, Cenari jogs straight at her as fast as his heavily damaged, corrupted suit will allow; his rockets must have joined his lasers in nonfunctionality. Even if he had his jets, Xion proves herself more than fast enough to intercept with a slash of the keyblade at his chest. The last thing Emily sees as she passes by the wall of this other rectangular roof access point is Cenari parrying each of aquamarine swipes with only his lightly shelled forearms. A standstill, perhaps, but that's good enough for her.

With the two superpowered individuals sparring with glassy crashes and thunderous pounds, poor, pathetic Emily is forced to run away once again. To think that she has some pretty impressive Heartless kills on her record... then again, this only further cements that the danger of the Heartless lies in those who use them. At least this time around, she won't be disappointing Xion by yet more delay. After all, she came out through this door: it's only natural she'll get back in...

...locked. Really? This town that would be considered quaint were it not for Axel's intrusive contributions manages to have automatically locking doors on the roofs? Well, if this door is just as stubborn as the last one, she might just be better off risking a trip down the fire escape. Sure, it's probably trapped in some way, but she's pretty sure it would be to keep people out rather than in. She'll just disarm it when she sees it.

Emily barely gets past the cover of the roof access before a sight in the horizon sends her right back. Emerging from the dim rays of the dying sun is a towering mass of scrap metal and malfunctioning circuitry. Burnt, scarred, neglected, and decaying, it lacks any semblance of either origin or intentional design: as though it simply came together through the chaos of the big bang. If the possibility of blue and white forces shooting her down from the fire escape is enough to give her pause, the inevitability of Cenari's ship doing the same is more than enough to send her right back to the stubborn steel door.

It's at times like these that she misses the academy. That short primer on lockpicking didn't do a whole lot for her and given how it was dropped almost as soon as it was introduced, it's unlikely she'd still have the skill even if she paid rapt attention. Since the other steel door beat her partially damaged poly-alloy-whatever suit, she's just going to have to take the chance and try to shoot off the hinges. Hopefully, even if the door itself is reinforced to the gills, some part that holds it up isn't quite so sturdy. She just needs to find it...

With the sound of rockets returning to the cacophony of battle, Emily unholsters her weapon and carefully angles it inwards through the wall to what she guesses will detonate just behind the hinge. To her almost-overjoyed satisfaction, the screwed-on metal slab pops right out of the brick wall. With the harsh glow of lasers passing overhead, Emily throws caution to the wind and quickly caps the other two hinges without lingering even a split second. Of course, despite her desire to shine under pressure like a pearl, all it takes is one desperate tug of the loose middle hinge to render her rush futile. Well, she's just going to have to redo the bottom shot, huh?

As it turns out, Emily doesn't have to go to such effort to get this damn thing open. Unfortunately, it's opened by Cenari crashing right through, the swinging door smacking Emily clean off her feet a good ten meters away. Despite the shock, she manages to somehow land on her feet after a near-stumble. Sadly, it might have been better if she had fallen prone on her back because with an effortless twirl, Cenari throws the steel door like a rectangular discus way too fast for any reaction further than an involuntary slack jaw; it's a shame Xion only just finally catches up with a futile swing that fateful tenth of a second.

With a deafening crash of steel upon alloy, the sheer force of the impact sends Emily crashing right through the guard rail. With Cenari's ship overhead and only a heavily damaged combat suit to cushion this ten story fall, it's basically a given that mops are going to be needed to clean up the mess she's about to leave. Still, for reasons unknown, she's unusually calm about the whole ordeal: perhaps it's because there's no use spending those last few seconds fretting over the inevitable? Or perhaps it's because Xion is now leaping over the side with arms forward and wings extended? Yeah, the latter seems to make just a tad more sense. With nary a delay, she swoops right down and snatches Emily from her deadly freefall.

"Gotcha," Xion mutters, her monotone still somehow conveying a sense of disappointment. All of the sudden, Xion's role as protector takes a rather dire turn as one of Emily's envisioned events comes to light. With a blinding glow piercing even the thick black wings, Cenari's ship fires a thick white laser right into Xion's back. Holes form as the beam gradually sears through, loft and stability falling fast. Even Xion's determined expression gives way to a dull surprise: as though even the Nobody lack of pain is overcome by the destructive power of this attack.

"Hang on," Xion says, the two spiraling as she desperately flaps to regain control. The landscape seems to take on a kaleidoscope look as they spin ever faster, Emily's vision jolted as they bounce right off the ground with her armored back as cushioning. Dread overcomes her as her vision adjusts to see they're hurtling straight towards a T-intersection with some kind of glass-fronted business building in the way. Too fast to stop and too uncontrolled to turn, Emily closes her eyes and braces for impact.

With the shrill sound of shattering windows, the two crash right through the fancy exterior. Shards of broken glass tear away at Emily's skin, blood drenching her skin and clothes. Before she even gets to fully register all this damage, they smash right through what must be the wall of this lobby. Her skeleton manages to remain largely intact in spite of this hit, but the same cannot be said of her long-suffering suit as it bursts apart into a dozen pieces. No longer armored or otherwise protected, she and Xion roll and scrape across the thinly carpeted floor before coming to a sudden stop against a less-flimsy wall. Well, that could have gone better...

"Urggghhhh..." Emily groans, forcing her eyes open even as blood fills her sockets. Well, just as she felt, she has definitely crashed into some kind of old-fashioned business lobby, pieces of her suit and equipment scattered all around. Forcing herself onto her knees in spite of the agonizing pain, she looks over herself to see a hundred gashes pouring blood at an alarming rate. To think she's going to die not by some grand moment of glory or in her old age, but by bleeding to death after trying so hard to run away. She already feels that icy feeling as her body loses its ability to maintain its warmth: that coldness all dying soldiers complain about.

"Hey, Kiko: come here," Xion mutters, her voice thin and weak. Emily swivels over to see that for all her damage, Xion is much, much worse. She is propped up against the wall, her skin and shattered armor just as torn and blood-drenched. Even worse is how her once-magnificent wings now lie torn and limp, pieces of the feather-type tissue floating in the puddle of blood around her. Even with so much of her body broken and wings torn, she still manages a fairly warm, pleasant smile as a stark contrast both to her pitiful shape and her cold demeanor up to this point.

"You look awful," Emily comments, crawling over as requested. Without a word, Xion gently grabs Emily's wrists and channels some kind of soothing green energy through her body. The deep gashes mend themselves before her eyes, the agonizing pain subsiding to a dull ache before fading away entirely. While her skin is still caked in blood and her clothing stained and almost indecent, her body could barely feel any better. Nice to know her expectation of bleeding to death turned out completely unwarranted.

"Go join the others," Xion weakly requests, letting her arms go limp to her sides, "They need all the help they can get."

"What about you?" Emily asks, "...why can't you just heal yourself?"

"If only healing worked like that..." Xion gloomily mutters, looking down at her heavily gashed body, "I'll be fine. Just go."

"...no, you won't," Emily responds, frustrated, "Just... look at yourself. You need help."

"Riku and Kairi need help more than I do," Xion insists, gesturing towards the hefty experimental gun now free from its harness, "Don't worry about me. Just... take your guns, take back the city."

Emily starts to say something, but the passing rumble of massive rockets distract her tirade. As much as she wants to carry Xion to the medical assistance she so desperately needs, there's just no way it's going to happen so long as Cenari is just outside. Hell, it's unlikely she would even stand a chance of sneaking past his keen senses by herself. With reluctance, she starts scooping up and re-equipping all her gear. Pistol to her side, grenades over her belly, knives over her butt, and Twilight's Javelin strapped to an arm. Maybe it's far from ideal, but she has nothing to hang onto but faith in Uina's engineering and her own moxie.

"I'm coming back for you," Emily declares, looking over the buttons and trigger of her experimental weapon, "Just... try not to die, okay? Please? For me?"

"So much concern..." Xion weakly mutters as Emily walks towards the door, "...for someone never meant to exist..."

Stepping through the knee-high wall with a finger on the power switch, Emily makes her way through the ruined lobby with about as much stealth as hard boots on fragile glass can offer. Unfortunately, two blue and white troopers are a few hundred meters down the perpendicular street and closing in with weapons at the ready. Emily isn't quite sure if they saw her or not as she takes cover behind a support pillar, but even if they didn't, there's more than enough evidence of the crash landing to lead them straight to Xion. As much as she hates having to waste the precious time her superweapon affords her, she's just going to have to flip it on and hope she can reach and take down Cenari before it runs out of juice.

With a flip of the power switch with one hand and a casual snap of the belt with the other, Emily releases the trigger-grip and swipes every grenade pin in one quick motion. The scuffing of armored boots on asphalt comes right on time as Emily tosses the belt around the corner and plugs her ears as best she can. A bright flash pours in from around the corners, bathing all but a thin triangle in stark white light. The most piercingly shrill noise slightly disorients Emily, but even with a tad of wooziness throwing off her balance, she still has to have it better than the two enemies with slumps loud enough to break through the sound. No better time than now.

Bracing the gun with all her might, she spins around the corner to find both of her targets staggered and turned away. Perfect. Before they get a bearing on her, she fires two successive bolts of twirling dark purple and stark white energy into their torsos. Both of them convulse as their burns incinerate them from the inside out, collapsing them with gaping holes the size of basketballs where their vital organs used to be. Perhaps not the most impressive effect, but considering that these suits didn't even get scratched by explosive bullets, that probably means this is a top tier weapon.

That shrill noise gone and her balance restored, Emily runs out onto the street with determination on her face. She doesn't even have to glance both ways down this road to find a dissipating white smoke trail leading right to Cenari about half a kilometer away, his ship hovering in the sky above. Seems he's not quite as keen as she once thought, but his gradual turn back can't possibly be coincidence. Emily lines up a shot as best she can and fires, but the beam dissipates just a few dozen meters short. Seems she's going to have to bridge the gap within the next forty seconds or so if she's going to take him down.

"**Empress!**" Cenari shouts, his raspy voice distorted beyond anything even remotely human, "**There's nowhere left to hide from the scary scene and no one left to confide. Your time is running out!**"

As Emily starts her hurried dash towards her delusional opponent, Cenari throws a hand to the sky in a move bizarrely similar to John Travolta. With the ship now lumbering in its turn, he starts a rocket charge straight at what he believes to be 'the empress': a move certain to be his downfall. Emily lines up and fires a wild miss, but with unflinching resolve, she follows up with a couple more ever-narrower rapid misses before one burst smacks him right out of his flight trajectory. He slams face first into the ground, rolling in a cloud of jet smoke and upheaved asphalt. Such a satisfying sight and most certainly unambiguous about his fate: she just needs to get to him and unload about a dozen more shots to seal his demise.

Sadly, it appears the damage not only barely took off a chunk of his suit, but has sent him into a unusually desperate defensive. Emily tries to send some more bolts into her now stationary target, but after two hits that burn off superficial parts of the suit, a swarm of aerial drones start actively blocking each successive shot as they rush towards her. Wild lasers of poor aim and low power cut through the air, forcing Emily into a defensive zig-zag of her own. No way she can ignore these things, but with so many of them and a gun too slow to kill them all before the deadline, what else can she do?

Of course, if what she needs is more firepower, what's to stop her from supplying it? While keeping the constantly blocked barrage of Twilight's Javelin trained on Cenari about as best as she can manage, she uses her other hand to grab her pistol and shoots down each drone that gets within her comfort zone with a surprising accuracy: funny how adrenaline brings out hidden talents. The occasional wimpy laser cuts away at her skin, but she barely even registers any pain through her fierce determination. So determined is she, in fact, that she pulls the trigger at least half a dozen times past the end of her clip, but with the drone swarm thinned out and Twilight's Javelin once again scoring hits that burn deeper into Cenari's corrupted body, she doesn't even need to reload.

But alas, Cenari certainly isn't one to run out of tricks so quickly. In the quarter kilometer separating Emily and her target, a thick white laser beam cuts down the street straight towards her. No longer able to see Cenari through the blinding light, she dashes to the side of the road, leaps onto a cart, and just barely dives across a store canopy as the diagonally angled beam of destruction tears rustic street and antiquated storefront apart. With the worst behind her and only a light singe of her hair to prove it, Emily's trigger finger cramps up just a little as she tries to fire a shot at Cenari. Instead of the usual bolt, the gun makes some kind of increasingly loud high-pitched sound as it glows and vibrates ever more violently... wait, this is a charge beam? Oh, the things she'd learn if she bothered to read manuals.

With an idea how to finish this fight once and for all, Emily holds down the trigger as she continues her rush towards the corrupted astronaut. More thick lasers from above start cutting through the street in an odd pattern of swirling pillars, but she's way too jacked on adrenaline and rage to let that so much as even slow her down. Hopping from side to side as she weaves through this gauntlet of destruction, she grips the gun ever tighter as its vibrations threaten to shake her arm right off of her shoulder. Worry almost brings deadly hesitation as the towering beams cut ever closer, but persevere she does and she emerges from the deadly grid to find Cenari forty meters away and hobbling. With her gun taken to the limit and pretty much no way in hell she's going to miss, she braces herself for the worst and finally lets the trigger go.

With a harsh recoil that nearly dislocates Emily's shoulder, Twilight's Javelin lets loose a swirling light and dark beam several meters wide and of power unimaginable. The gun heats up to scorching levels as this beam utterly obliterates everything in its path, cutting through even Cenari's keyblade-deflecting armor with no resistance at all. In his final split-second of awareness, he manages to give an expression of sheer, unexpected horror beyond even what he imposes on others. After what feels like an eternity, the beam finally dies down. The pieces of the corrupted astronaut not destroyed by this god-killing wave of destruction fall and scatter across the ground, leaving behind only a few extremities and the top half of his head with eyes fixed forever in a look of terror.

It's pretty safe to say that Cenari is beyond dead, but is Emily going to stop there? Hell no: When dealing with a sheer force of chaos like this, there is no such thing as unnecessary overkill. Unstrapping and tossing aside the steaming, whistling superweapon as directed, she shakes out the empty clip from her pistol and slams a new one in with mechanical speed and precision. If any of the tiny pieces of this corrupted astronaut so much as even twitch, she's not going to stop shooting until she's out of ammo or it's ground to a fine mist. It almost comes across as a disappointment as she lightly kicks the piece of head around to no visible effect whatsoever. Yep: dead.

The sound of distant explosions above replacing the bass-heavy jets bring her attention upon Cenari's ship. It appears whatever chaotic forces were keeping it together have run their course and as the old saying goes, what went up must now come down. As sparkly explosions like twisted firecrackers light up the frame, chunks of the hull stream like shooting stars towards the ground as it slowly glides downwards into the horizon. The dying ship falls behind the cover of the packed skyline, but it only takes a few seconds before a massive explosion of ground-shaking proportions confirms its final fate. With a sonic boom shattering all the nearby glass into a fine mist and a white mushroom cloud emerging from the impact of this floating behemoth, Emily is now finally satisfied enough to holster her gun. Well, if blue and white didn't know there were people here before, they certainly do now.

Objective finished and not a single person in sight, Emily heads back down the torn road towards that fateful crash site. Amidst the fatigue of adrenaline crash and the growing pain of her cuts, she feels oddly empowered: as though by somehow defeating this great menace, she has claimed some of its energy in the process. Of course, out of all her achievements so far, there is absolutely no way that anyone could ever deny her the credit she deserves now that she has taken out one of the most chaotically destructive beings to ever grace this universe.

"Empress..." Emily mutters in disbelief, looking over herself as she tries to figure out why Cenari would ever target her. She could have sworn that the so-called 'empress' was that girl in black... but then again, there's always that possibility that her tampering with Emily's mind left behind a trace that he latched upon... yeah, that must be it. The notion of Emily ever becoming some kind of 'empress' that warrants a force of nature destroying her just seems so... ludicrous. Implausible. Patent nonsense. Not even worth thinking about any further.

With the streets still devoid of any life, Emily walks through the shattered business lobby and emerges through the hole in the wall to find... nobody. Where Xion once sat, there is now only a pool of quickly drying blood outlined by pieces of black wings. No bloody footprints, no dragged trail, not even a drip of blood anywhere else in this room. Not a single scrap of evidence that can shed even the slightest ray of light on what just happened over the past couple minutes.

"Xion..." Emily mutters, turning away from the grisly scene. She can only hope that her savior has miraculously found her way to safety; lingering even a second longer in this place can only hurt the resistance effort. After all, Riku and Kairi have been left alone to hold the line for who knows how long? With her trusty pistol by her side, Emily returns on the path to reunite with her friends and push back this blue and white menace from the last refuge of the universe.


	78. Marshmellows and Fluffy Cakes

It's funny how drastic the mood of a place can change just by its inhabitants. Whereas Twilight Town once felt solemn, gloomy, and desolate, all it takes is the presence of some kind of blue and white flying saucer tethered to the out-of-place lab complex by glowing teal tubes to make the city dark and hostile. Perhaps the oddest thing about this ship is the set of six translucent honeycomb panels that almost appear as flower petals pointing downwards rather than upwards. With the two sections spinning in different directions and a soft glow underneath, it looks quite alien in spite of its supposedly-human owners.

But never fear for here comes Emily, donned in what remains of her armor's mesh undersuit and equipped with what remains of her weaponry. While she was once a bit wary traveling down these empty streets, the combination of Axel's estimate of a small scouting party, the distribution such a team would have, and their no-doubt rapid convergence back to the ship makes it pretty clear that any and all remaining troops are trying to break Riku and Kairi's defensive line. If anything, Emily should be running as fast as possible lest she appear to be an unreliable straggler.

Still, as she approaches the compromised chalk white lab, she must remain mindful of the possibility that her side has lost. Sure, such a dire outcome would leave little else for Emily to do but swallow her pride and surrender, but at least their apparent desire to capture her alive means she might still stand a chance even in such an event. It doesn't appear that she'll have to worry much about such an event because even as she dashes across the last wide-open patch of asphalt towards the door to the hall of fallen Organization XIII members, there's still that eerie calmness in the air. Not like there's a whole lot that would be visible on the outside in either event, so in she must go blind.

Carefully cracking the clinical lab door for a quick peek, she finds nothing of real note. While a whole bunch of empty steel boxes with hazard symbols are stacked near each of the wall-mounted weapons, there is basically nothing else to show any activity past or present. No troopers dead or alive, no real equipment, nothing. Since a narrow hallway full of convenient cover is obviously way better than outside in the open, she's more than happy to head inside.

The dull, muffled sounds of thuds and clangs force Emily to crouch behind the first set of boxes, drawing her most-likely-useless gun in the process. As she sits in place trying to figure out what she should do, something about the noise in the other room kind of reminds her of a rock concert Jamie dragged her to once. It has that disconnected feeling of something so noisy filtering through so many layers. It even has this kind of hypnotic rhythm: as though the battlers are performing a song together rather than trying to curb stomp each other.

As Emily looks upon her wimpy pistol in disdain, a murky reflection in its brass plate reminds her of one bleedingly obvious fact: this is an armory of the best weapons ever made. What's to stop her from just walking over to, say, the twin rotary spike guns of Xigbar and impaling her enemies right through their thick armor? Sure, it might be right next to the fateful door to the main lab, but fortune does favor the bold, after all.

However, it sadly turns out that Emily simply doesn't possess the right stuff to wield such weaponry. Merely laying a hand upon one of the chalky white grips sends this shrill, piercing noise reverberating through her head. The pitched battle in the other room dims as the migraine to end all migraines threatens to burst her temples apart from the inside out, throwing her off balance and almost staggering her off her feet. She recovers in a near-instant the moment her hand drifts away from the legendary weapon, a more obvious barrier presenting itself to her blurry vision: a set of steel straps locking the weapon down and some kind of twenty two button keypad of unknown password in an unknown alphabet. Well, so much for that.

A resonating thud that rattles the mounted frame brings Emily's attention back to the pressing matter of the battle at hand. The nature of that blast and the dim sound of familiar rifle fire tells quite a bit about what must be going on. Riku and Kairi obviously succeeded in setting up a defensive line at the elevator tube, but it's not a perfect defense. There must be at least a few remaining pockets of resistance; if it were just one or even two troopers, there really isn't a whole lot to stop Riku and Kairi from merely overrunning them. It's a shame that there are no windows; it would certainly make this next step a whole lot easier.

With the door to her back, gun in one hand and latch in the other, she listens intently for a pattern. Despite how much people want to believe they are masters of their own fate, habits are inevitable and once a set of skills passes into second nature, their actions really do become pretty deterministic right down to the millisecond. Shot after shot, shuffle after shuffle, it becomes ever-clearer that there is only one trooper on the other side of this door and he's just acting on cruise control.

Timing her actions to mirror his shots, she opens the door, peeks inside, and closes it before he ducks back into his cover. From this quick glimpse, she was able to gleam that there is, indeed, only one trooper immediately on the other side of this door. He seems to have set up some kind of perimeter made up of shields spiked straight into the ground. Such a defense would seem unnecessary if it weren't for the fact that what was once a room that was brimming with scientific equipment is now pretty clear and desolate; whether it's by looting or the ravages of battle will require her to actually go inside.

With the trooper inside locked in a futile standstill and apparently too stubborn to let up his attack, Emily swings the door open in time with his first burst to find him with back turned. Dashing towards him as fast as she can, she almost falters as he starts to turn back around just a bit sooner than anticipated. While ill-boding at first, it actually turns out to be a boon as it makes it trivially easy for Emily to slam him against his cover and unload a decisive bullet under his chin. She doesn't get a whole lot of time to be enamored by her impressive entry as a couple sonic distortion bolts send her crouching right alongside her recent kill. Morbid, but necessary.

"_Thank you_," Riku calls out in this weird tone mixing sarcasm with relief, "That guy was really pissing me off."

"Don't think you've won just yet!" calls back a heavily distorted voice of indeterminate gender. Content that she's not likely to be targeted so long as Riku is here taunting them, Emily peeks just a little over the shields to get a better view of this battlefield. Sure enough, the place definitely looks looted to hell and back, but it seems they don't hold Axel's big vision of a winged society in high regard. While she never exactly counted them before or anything, she can tell they didn't spare a single vat from an untimely smash and splatter. Whatever they saw in this, it must have offended them even beyond their lust for technology.

Glancing around, it seems that Emily won't be joining her comrades any time soon. Sure enough, Riku and Kairi are pinned down in the center of the room, with piles of steel boxes as makeshift cover and the intrusive addition of a cylindrical elevator tube behind them. Through small cracks in their temporary wall, she's able to see that both have apparently taken just as many armor-shattering hits as her and shed their helmets as a result. Not exactly an optimistic field test for Axel's hybrid armor suit, is it? Neither seem terribly well-off as both are blood-stained and slouching, but even as Kairi frantically fires poorly-aimed potshots with her Evolving Arsenal™ set on rifle, she comes across as the more physically and mentally wounded of the two. Funny how calm and tenacity holds better presence than rage and passion.

If not for every step of the fifty barren meters within clear sight of the two last opposing groups, Emily would join her friends in their final stand. Sadly, she doesn't even have a clear path to either enemy camp should she feel suicidal enough to rush them. It at least comes as a relief that they've been whittled down to just three people total, but the lone one at the far end of the room certainly looks way more impressive than the two piddly foot soldiers about halfway in between. With an intricate runic pattern all over, an ornamental silver mask of rather creepy human perfection, and other sculpted silver pieces accenting a feminine-leaning androgynous form, this person wields what appears to be some kind of mechanical cross between a wand and baton; not quite unlike Uina's, but made of platinum rather than brass. It probably also helps that there aren't about nine or ten scattered dead bodies wearing that same kind of suit.

"Well?" Riku taunts, the slightest bit of exasperation in his obviously forced tone, "Where are your superior numbers now? Oh, that's right, you guys can't even fight off an unempowered girl with a pistol. You're pathetic! Just give up before Axel gets back and we'll let you live!"

"We do not retreat; we do not surrender," the tech mage recites while casting potshots of plasma bursts, unflinching and defiant to the last, "You are a fool to tip your hand so readily and reveal your reinforcement as little more than our future hostage. Go get her... and keep her alive, you trigger-happy retards!"

"But what about the doctor?" one of the two troopers asks, his voice undistorted and distinctly masculine. With that statement, Emily just barely notices the frazzled grey hair hardly visible over the makeshift barrier. Obviously none other than Dr. Goldwater, caught up as a hostage in this dire predicament but not exactly getting the treatment of one. While it is a bit callous given much thought, she can at least see the logic: Goldwater has little particular importance as either asset or person to Riku and Kairi, but may or may not be vital to blue and white's whole operation. Basically, she's no bargaining chip...

...funny enough, it seems Emily might have chanced into one of her own. Shoving the dead body aside, she finds none other than the steel briefcase filled with all six prisms. Even without her expert eye, she's somehow able to tell that every last one of these are the real things. Kind of creepy to think that she not only holds the key to unleashing the ancient destroyer, but that it's also just as she wants. Not like Emily intends to let her loose or anything, but still...

"...what about her?" the tech mage finally asks, irritated and impatient, "She's obviously not going anywhere. Stop wasting my time and get her!"

With an apprehensive glance at each other, the two troopers rise from their cover and lay down some hasty suppressive fire that forces Emily to duck her head back down. The percussive din of energy bolts and keyblade fireballs intensifies with this action, the occasional wayward shot passing over Emily's camp. There's little she can really do with a wimpy pistol, but with the source of the bursts drawing nearer by the second, she simply has to take the risk and look up. Seems the spiked shields are movable and while they're apparently too small and heavy for these troopers do more than crouch-walk while blindly firing over the side, it still raises the question of why they don't close the gap to Riku and Kairi. Perhaps they're just total crap in melee?

To Emily's relief, one of these two incoming troopers leaves just a bit too much of himself exposed and takes a decisive bolt to the foot. His stumble and reflexive lowering of his shield to prop himself up proves to be his downfall, with several more bolts and fireballs swatting him around like a rag doll until he falls limp in the corner. Well, that's half of a solution to this pressing issue. Sadly, the other one proves more cautious upon the demise of his buddy and crouches in even deeper, firing a few deliberate misses towards Emily to try to force her back down; something she sees right through. Well, if they need her alive, she can definitely abuse their apprehension to hit her in the head.

While the armor is too thick to be pierced and this one is smart enough to tuck his chin down, one small weakness does present itself: leather straps on the shield. It almost seems comical how something so strong has such a weak link, but then again, somebody with a clear view would be just as well off hitting the trooper himself. While Emily's explosive bullets may be completely useless to this poly-alloy-whatever stuff, it's more than enough for processed animal hide.

Meticulously lining up her shots, Emily looses a couple rounds that only barely chip away at the strap a little at a time. The enemy soldier only finally grasps what she's doing just as one lucky bullet snaps it away like a rubber band. He makes a desperate grab to try to prevent the shield from toppling over, but one wayward energy bolt just barely edges over the top and splatters his brains inside his helmet. With hand atop the shield, he slumps into an awkward crouch that keeps either from toppling onto their backs. Funny how some things work out.

"Well?" Riku shouts out, "What's your plan now? Three on one and you've got nobody coming to back you up! It's over!"

"You're a short-sighted dolt, Riku," the tech mage declares, stymied but still bold as ever, "So what if your blind luck and guerrilla tactics allows you to defeat a scouting party of bottom-ranked mercenaries that always thought this was a wild goose chase? You really think you've scored some major victory as you and your comrades lie there bleeding and reeling from the tiniest fraction of our military might? Do you really think we're going to leave you alone now that we know of this planet and all its wondrous treasure? You've lost! When we don't report in, you'll be crushed under our heels in only a few days! You can run, but with our influence spanning from corner to corner of this forsaken universe, your demise is inev-"

"Hey," Emily cuts in, a burning question on her mind, "Are you a boy or a girl?"

"...yes," the unhelpful tech mage responds, the tone veering away from that of an oppressive crusader, "Miss... Kai-Koh, is it? Kee-Koh... no, don't tell me, I don't care. The Matriarchy requested us to bring you back alive along with the prisms you hold. If you surrender yourself to me, I will request them to spare your friends should they remain uninvolved with us in the future."

"I don't think you're in any position to make demands like that," Riku comments.

"You have my word," the tech mage assures with convincing sincerity. Of course, all the sincerity in the universe doesn't change the technicality of the statement...

"I'm smarter than that," Emily chides, too savvy to be fooled so easily, "You said 'request'. The so-called 'Matriarchy' could say no and you'd still be true to your word. Even then, I would rather die than surrender to you."

"You don't have so much conviction and you know it," the tech mage declares, still in a persuasive tone, "Do you not care about the well-being of your friends? The matriarchy wants you and you alone and we will not stop until they have you! Spare your comrades an untimely fate! Surrender willingly!"

"Why the hell do you want m-" Emily attempts, the deafening crash of... well, absolutely everything from behind startling her out of her wits. Life almost seems to go in slow motion as she turns to find the most confusing mixture of powdery bits of wall and rapidly forming, spiky green crystal fast incoming. It doesn't take too long for her to figure out who it is just before Mint comes crashing through, her gaudy green dress and mussed blonde hair caked in the vaguely-talcum-like substance that was once within the architecture. Even with less than a second to take all this in, Emily is still able to somehow sense a desperate focus in her eyes; the kind spurred on by injury to both body and pride.

Instinct brings Emily's pistol to bear on her fast incoming aggressor, but even if guns weren't completely ineffective, Mint still proves more than fast enough to swipe the piddly weapon out of her hand with a blunt crystal mallet. Emily doesn't even get a chance to register this disarming before Mint thrusts forward with a shimmering battering ram that crashes her right through the makeshift fence of movable shields. As she tumbles and slides across the stainless steel floor, Emily is still able to catch glimpses of Mint casually walking to and picking up the prism briefcase while her rapid crystalline shield deflects every last attack sent her way.

"I'll be taking this, thank you very much," Mint comments in a mocking tone, peeking inside the metallic baggage while still casually ignoring Riku and Kairi's barrage. From this new vantage point, Emily is now able to fully see the good doctor and it appears she's not exactly much better off than anyone else. The extensive bruising on her face and the freshly tattered gown tell a story of struggle, the climax visible in her awkwardly broken left leg bent at a gruesomely unnatural angle. Even with such injury, the stark horror on her face seems not to be in the present, but in the future: a fear of what is to come now that Mint is here.

"You..." the tech mage hostilely snarls, the tone showing a surprising amount of deference. Mint peers over and turns her head at a deliberate pace, slowly closing the briefcase with a smirk on her face. She knows she has something the tech mage wants and she definitely wants to make that quite clear in all her actions.

"What? Do you have something to say to me?" Mint asks as she hooks the briefcase behind her back, the tech mage responding with a downwards swing of the wand that apparently teleports them in a rapidly dissipating cloud of dark purple smoke, "...didn't think so. Now that the peanut gallery is gone, who's ready for some _fun?_"

"Restraint, my dear apprentice, restraint," an all-too-familiar voice coldly reminds from down the collapsed, artificially darkened hallway. It's only with that statement that Riku and Kairi halt their pointless assault upon the buff green-clad girl, all eyes focusing upon the newly formed abyss of a room. Before the main attraction herself steps out, her pet raven swoops through and circles the spacious laboratory as it caws ominously. With perfect timing, it finishes its round and lands on Maleficent's shoulder just as she saunters out of the darkness, the hallway restoring itself to its usual dimly lit self. Appearing as cold and unconcerned as usual, it's still kind of weird for her to show up in person so soon after the arrival of her apprentice.

"Sod that," Mint dismisses over her shoulder, pointing at Riku and Kairi, "Which of you cheeky bastards killed the astronaut? Don't be shy: I want to thank you for saving me the trouble and reward you with the honor of a duel."

"Maleficent..." Riku harshly mutters, gripping his keyblade ever tighter as he forces himself onto his own two feet. For all of Kairi's desire to be bold and unwavering in the midst of adversity, it seems she really was just puffing out all this time as she deflates in Maleficent's presence. No doubt a reminder of wounds that will never heal.

"My dear Riku," Maleficent coolly responds, walking up to Mint's anxious side, "Were you ever so foolish to believe you could hide from us forever? As I have told you many times before, there is no running from your fate and no hiding from the inevitable."

"Should I?" Mint asks as she takes a step forward, stopping upon Maleficent lightly blocking with a tilt of her sceptre. While Emily is thankful that the two enemies seem to have forgotten about her very existence, she still laments over how this injury has left her winded and reeling even after a full minute. Not like she really has much she can do to help the situation since Mint is bulletproof, Maleficent is deathproof, and her gun has been knocked out of sight somewhere. All she has are her knives and her awkward, uncoordinated, injured body. No, she's just going to have to lie there and believe in her friends.

"Not just yet," Maleficent says in a knowing tone, "Riku, my wayward apprentice. My offer sti-"

"Shut up," Riku interrupts, kicking the stack of steel boxes out of the way. Maleficent wordlessly brings her sceptre back to her side and slowly backs away, her latest apprentice cracking her knuckles and popping her neck in a threatening manner. She certainly does have a flair for the dramatic no doubt passed on from her mistress and unfortunately, it's not just puffery: she really has proven herself of defeating Riku in many of Emily's visions... then again, those visions were apparently all fed to her by the girl in black to manipulate her into doing stuff, so who knows how reliable they are? But in the realm of reality, Sora couldn't topple her, so odds are pretty good that she really could take Riku down. One only hopes she slips up just enough.

With a twitch action occurring faster than a blink of the eye, Riku rushes his target with a vertical slash. Mint once again proves her worthiness of Maleficent's attention by an equally fast formation of her own makeshift sword to effortlessly parry the blow to the side. Sadly, it seems Emily's expectation of Riku winning this fight is just a little optimistic because something about this action seems to stagger him and delay a follow-up attack. Even though Mint could just end the fight right here and now with any number of jagged quartz implements, she instead pokes at Riku's bloody hip with the index and middle finger of her free hand.

"Urgh," Riku groans, wildly swiping with his keyblade as he grabs at the wound with his other hand. Mint casually steps back, intentionally allowing the crystalline sword to graze just close enough to cut her bangs. She takes position a few paces away, reforming her sword to match Riku's groove for groove. Kind of an unspoken promise of a 'fair' fight.

"You're better than this," Mint chides in a disappointed tone, swinging her weapon in a circular arc into the ground. Those words seem to almost act as a salve for Riku's pain, inspiring him to regain his form and assume a proper battle stance. The kind of proud, defiant display that he's ready to bring her down to cripple town.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you," Riku sarcastically quips, swinging his keyblade a few times in a showy demonstration. Rather than rushing in once again, he starts a slow circular strafe with keyblade pointed defensively as he assesses the situation. Mint merely follows with her head as she holds her pose, apparently willing to allow her opponent any angle he wants. Only as he drifts out of her sight does she finally turn to face, still keeping her guard down and her side open. She's awfully confident to allow so much leeway; she must believe him to be wounded beyond any chance of winning.

With Mint completely absorbed in her watch of Riku, Kairi builds up enough confidence to rush in from the blind side. With her chalk white and flat grey weapon formed into a heavy sword, it almost looks like it takes all her effort not to let out a battle cry as she rushes with all her rage. With only a fraction of a second to spare, Mint casually twirls on her heel and throws a crystal blade up to block this wild attack. Of all the things she apparently spares of Riku, she certainly doesn't have any compunctions about using everything she can on Kairi and effortlessly swats her away with a brutal, bone-rattling punch of a comically-gigantic crystal fist. Kairi gets launched back into a bouncing tumble across the smooth surface, her limp red wings shaking loose and wrapping around her as if it were a rolled-up carpet.

"Wait your turn, little girl," Mint quips over her shoulder, her distraction almost allowing Riku to get a swipe in. She blocks it with a crystal pillar, of course, but rather than letting it pause him for another humiliating poke, his keyblade starts glowing with red energy as he follows up with another swipe. Mint lets off a surprised grunt as the radiant blade slices right through her defense, the shimmering quartz wall and gaudy green outfit giving way to an instantly-cauterized gash across her breasts. No longer confident in lazily blocking each attack in showy defiance, she starts proper defensive weaving and dodging as she narrowly parries each of Riku's energy-imbued slashes.

"Why did you wait until _now_ to start trying?" Mint asks in great irritation, taking the offensive and forcing Riku into the defensive against her furious swipes and stabs, "We're taking your keyblade when we're done with you, so you owe me your last good battle. Stop slacking, dammit!"

As Riku and Mint continue their constantly shifting standstill battle, Kairi untangles herself from her awkward appendages and picks herself up from the ground. Her gaze catches Maleficent's for a few seconds, the latter giving a look of sheer, utter contempt; as though something about the red-winged girl deeply offends her. This look spurs Kairi to rush the black-cloaked figure with her large sword, Maleficent teleporting away in a puff of black smoke as her raven flies off. In a display of disproportionate strength, the bird slams upwards across Kairi's jaw and staggers her into collapsing back into a sad heap on the ground. The raven proceeds to hover in place as Maleficent reappears in a puff of smoke, immediately perching back on her shoulder.

"Foolish girl," Maleficent comments, turning her attention back to the real battle at hand. With the back and forth clashing and crashing filling the air, the soft clack of a small metal firearm should go unheard... in theory. In practice, both Emily and Mint pick up on it, turning to find Goldwater has crawled a good fifty meters over to the wayward gun and now holds it with a shaky grip. Despite her obvious experience with firearms in the past, the hyperventilation and pouring tears reveal an extreme agitation. Whether or not her brink of a nervous breakdown is caused by the situation or the obvious pain of her injuries is anyone's guess; probably both. Regardless, this distraction is definitely an opportunity for both Riku and Kairi to finish Mint off right now.

"Excuse me," Mint dismissively states, summoning a giant crystal hammer and smacking Riku's defensive stance hard enough to skid him across on his feet. Without even having to look at her next target, she twists on her heel and smacks Kairi right out of her leaping stab with a deafening thud. She finishes her twirl with a deliberately-telegraphed volley of a dozen spikes at Riku, forcing him to dive to the side to evade. Obvious stalling.

"Goldies," Mint says as she turns to face, her voice calm and collected, "Don't be stupid. Put the gun down."

"No!" Goldwater defiant declares, her hands shaking even harder. Mint sighs as she starts towards the doctor and summons a thick wall to her side, Riku bouncing off harmlessly. Still more stalling, but it's kind of weird how much more effective she seems to be when her priorities are shifted. Was she holding back all this time?

"I told you I'd find you no matter where you run," Mint continues, holding an expecting hand out, "Didn't even take but a few weeks. Why can't you just act like the Discordian you are and help us conquer the universe? Think of all the SCIENCE you can get! You know there's no escaping your fate."

Goldwater starts to try to say something, but with her wet face and quivering lip, all she really manages is some kind of pained whimper. Mint slows to a stop a couple meters away, still keeping Riku at bay by constant shifting and rebuilding of her crystalline shell. Goldwater finally snaps and starts bawling and blubbering her eyes out, looking downwards but still keeping her gun leveled upon her former tormentor. Mint gives an impatient sigh and rolls her eyes, making some dismissive gesture in the process. After several more awkward seconds of an elderly woman crying like a baby, Goldwater finally gets a rise out of Mint by instead turning the gun under her own chin.

"No!" Mint yells, dismissing the crystal shell and leaping forward as fast as possible. Unfortunately, as fast as she may be, she proves much too slow for the centimeter pull of a trigger and the even faster journey of the bullet through her flesh. One might be forgiven for forgetting that the gun is loaded with explosive rounds and gaping in shock as the entire back half of her head sprays out in a chunky red mist. While she may have been much too slow to have made it worthwhile, Mint does prove quite a bit of precision by slicing off the top half of the gun without so much as leaving a papercut on the doctor's cold, dead hands. The finality of the shooting takes a little to reach the entire audience, everybody shocked still and speechless as Goldwater's dead body slumps backwards. Well, that's one way to escape fate...

"...wow..." Mint mutters after an awkward few seconds, chuckling nervously as she looks to Maleficent, "I know she _talked_ about it, but I didn't think she'd actually _do_ it... guess it's just the two of us again, huh? What about the plan?"

"She can be replaced," Maleficent coldly states, gesturing towards Riku, "Playtime's over. Finish the task."

"Fine," Mint sighs reluctantly, dismissing her crystal wall and turning back to face Riku with absolute seriousness in her face. Something about this expression and the tightening of her battle stance really worries the hell out of Emily, but with her last decent weapon now lying in two pieces beside the corpse of the doctor, what can she really do? Funny how little she finds herself caring about Goldwater's untimely fate: maybe it was a shock to see her blow her brains out and maybe it renders Emily's decision all those months ago not to pull the trigger moot, but ultimately, she means nothing in the end. Oh, well.

Once again traveling faster than the speed of eyes, Riku makes the first attack with a forward thrust of his glowing keyblade. Sadly, as fast as he might be, Mint proves even faster by circling to his side and punching his wounded hip with a giant crystal fist. With only a soft grunt signifying his pain, Riku feints a wild slice to one side and nearly catches Mint on the other with his reversal. With his enemy off-center and her plan interrupted, he starts cutting through her hasty defenses while constantly bridging the gap as she tries to back away. Her preoccupation with simply keeping the keyblade out of her skin leaves her unprepared for the littered terrain, tripping over the sprawled corpse of one of the fallen tech troopers. Sensing weakness, Riku doesn't even wait for her to finish her fall before readying a downwards impalement to end this fight right here and now.

But of course, Mint will not be so easily defeated. Seems she must have been faking it all this time because with surprising clarity of movement, she grabs Riku's wrist and swings herself around his arm. With his keyblade instead finding its way into the thick chest of a fallen enemy, Mint gets back on her feet and pulls Riku with one arm while elbowing his face in a brutal spray of blood with the other. With this attack staggering the white haired boy, she follows up by smacking his arm away from the keyblade and uppercutting him half a dozen meters in the air with a giant crystal fist.

Riku is lucky to have capable friends like Kairi able to rush in during his moment of weakness, but Mint isn't going to have any of that. Without even looking behind her, she throws her crystal fist behind her and reforms it into a hammer to bounce Kairi's downwards slash away. With a surprisingly graceful leap assisted by jutting pillars of crystal under her feet, she twirls up in the air and slams Riku away with so much force as to send a thousand cracks through her chrysoprase weapon.

She hardly ends there, though. With Riku now sent flying away, she finishes her midair twirl and brings the hammer down on an unprepared Kairi with all her might. The deafening glassy crash reverberates through the massive, mostly empty room, a spray of a thousand crystal shards breaking off from her magical weapon. After several long seconds of a thick, dissipating green cloud, it clears up to reveal Kairi sprawled on her back with a hundred cuts all over and Mint standing victorious over her. Oh, dear...

"Unworthy," Mint harshly remarks with an impatient irritation, pulling some kind of machine wand from a skirt pocket. Emily realizes what it is almost immediately and pointless as it may be, she still attempts to yell out but triggers a coughing fit instead. With a push of the button, the wand shoots out some kind of wide dark purple ray that painfully levitates Kairi into the air as electricity crackles all around her. She screams and writhes while drifting to the opposite ends of the beam, the energy leash snaps with an odd wave of anti-noise that casts the whole place in silence. After several seconds where time seems to distort, the weapon collapses to the ground and shatters into dozens of wayward components. Kairi follows soon after, involuntarily coughing and hacking as she curls into a fetal position.

"Kairi!" Riku shouts in stark horror, picking himself up to his knees in spite of his heavy wounds. Mint ignores him as she walks over to the pile of interlinking servos and diodes that was once the Evolving Arsenal™, kicking them around in fascination for a little before turning her eyes back to Riku.

"Foolish girl," Maleficent coldly comments, walking over to Kairi and prodding her with the tip of her sceptre, "Such a weak will to throw her lot in with those who once abducted her. So quick to corrupt her body and taint her essence in a vainglorious bid for relevance amongst those greater than her and blind vengeance against those who wronged her. Pitiful."

"You monsters..." Riku says in a fiery, ominous voice as he floats up to his feet with keyblade loose in his hand, the light around him dimming and distorting as darkness starts to tint his eyes. Mint tilts her head as she grins with a smug satisfaction, apparently both happy to see his coming descent and fully ready to mitigate it. With a full vision of how this duel is going to end, Emily realizes that her one idea to possibly save Riku must be acted upon before it's too late.

"Stop!" Emily shouts at the top of her lungs, finally rising to her feet after all this time, "I'm the one that killed Cenari. I challenge you to a duel, Mint."

"...Kiko?" Riku says after blinking a few times, confusion apparently staving off some of the corruption for just a little. Mint slowly turns to face Emily as she pockets the techno-wand, frowning with the kind of impatience of one denied their greatest victory. Just as planned.

"I killed him with one of Grandmaster's inventions," Emily clarifies to Mint's unspoken disbelief, eliciting a noise that can only be considered the closest thing to a laugh Maleficent has ever given.

"The dark star," Maleficent spookily recites, "Desperately pulled into this universe at a whim, corrupted beyond even the reach of the Heartless, and pitted against those who may destroy it, he shall find his end not to a knight, but a pawn. So shall fall the chosen guardian of Kingdom Hearts."

"This thug?" Mint asks, giving a glare of total disdain worthy of one at the bottom of the social ladder. Needing to seal the deal, Emily unstraps her knives, tosses them aside, and throws up her dukes.

"Marquess of Queensbury rules, come on!" Emily yells, quoting some video game she can't quite remember. Even though she has every reason to think Mint should fall for this line and sinker, this provocation instead inspires the green-clad girl to look to her mistress with uncertainty.

"If she's the one, what should I-" Mint attempts.

"How did you find us?" Emily rudely and impulsively interrupts, needing to keep the attention focused on her. Even if she can't provoke a time-stalling fight, maybe she can still waste enough time for Axel to get back by asking questions. Maybe if she frustrates them enough, Mint will fight her anyway.

"A little black bird told us," Maleficent answers curtly, turning to face Riku, "Time is of the essence. Ignore the urchin and finish the task."

"When I'm done with you," Mint says in a provocative manner as she turns back to Riku, "I'm going to torture the _hell_ out of your slutty, worthless friend."

With those words sending a fire through him, Riku resumes building up darkness as his expression grows more and more dire. Emily quickly considers all her options and arrives to only one suicidal conclusion. Knowing full well she's doomed either way, she kicks off into a desperate dash towards Mint with the tiniest ray of hope that she'll tackle her and cause a concussion or something else equally improbable. Predictably, Mint summons forth a blunt crystal hammer and swats Emily away without even twitching her head to look. Well, that was useful...

"You'll get your duel next time, 'Marle'," Mint dismissively quips as she desummons her weapon, taunting Riku with a one-handed clap towards her. Just as his trembling reaches critical mass, Mint swings her arms towards the ground as huge walls of green crystal envelop her. Just like the vision, Riku zooms forward at the speed of light, leaving behind a lingering red laser trail of energy. The air quickly explodes with an inferno of darkness-infected flames and broken crystal, an electromagnetic pulse detonating every light fixture in a hail of sparks. The windowless room goes completely dark save for the dim blue light of the resilient elevator tube, leaving the outcome of this attack maddeningly uncertain. Emily strains her ears for something, anything to dispel her worst fears, but all she can hear is silence.

After several tense seconds that feels like hours, the soft hum of back-up generators heralds the illumination of several redundant strips of dim lights. Emily's worst fears turn out to be quite founded as she finds Riku in a convulsive mess on the ground and Mint standing completely unscathed above him. She has the oddest conflicted expression of not only smug satisfaction, but also a certain unsatisfied regret: as though she won on one front, but not on another. With techno-wand at the ready, she digs a foot under Riku and flips him onto his back.

"Bye bye, Riku," Mint wistfully sighs, firing the ray of dark purple energy once again. Emily's stomach sinks as she witnesses all those worst case scenarios of her dreams brought to reality, Riku's pained shrieks and convulsions piercing her soul. Just like Kairi before him, his weapon drifts away as a red tether of electricity becomes more visible the further the gap. Mint circles around towards the floating weapon while keeping the beam leveled on the two, reaching out and grabbing the crystalline sword at exactly the moment the leash snaps. The finality of this dreaded moment hits home as Riku drops onto his back, darkness still swirling around him as his convulsion gives way to limpness.

"Riku!" Kairi shouts out, coughing up a few soft sprays of blood in the process. Mint shows just how much she cares by ignoring her and instead swinging the dimming keyblade around a few times, unenthused to hold such a legendary weapon. Maleficent taps her sceptre to the ground and summons forth a dark black cloud, the gloom clearing to reveal a rectangular steel box of about a meter wide and two meters long. With a glowing keypad, tubes gushing with inky blackness, and the signature blue and white flag emblazoned on its side, there's no way anything good can possibly come of it.

"Fear not, little girl," Maleficent coldly states, gesturing to the box, "Your suffering will not last long for with this blasphemous device, Darkside shall be summoned to pass your final judgment. Apprentice."

"Yes?" Mint asks, pulling out some kind of cloth mat from a skirt pocket and wrapping it around the now-lifeless dark red keyblade.

"Cut off her wings," Maleficent orders with about as much passion as an executive ordering a coffee.

"...why?" Mint asks, pragmatism in her voice rather than reluctance, "She's just going to become Heartless food in a few minutes anyway. Who cares?"

"They offend me," Maleficent states with disgust, "Examples must be made no matter how few witnesses there may be."

"Fine," Mint says with impatience, jogging over to a kneeling Kairi and stomping her face first into the ground by the shoulder. Unraveling the keyblade into an aerial spin with one hand and jutting the other into the red-haired girl's back, she grabs the weapon out of the air as she pulls a limp red wing from its recessed groove. With the most sickening sound of breaking bone and sinew punctuated by shrill screams, Mint remorselessly and gracelessly hacks and saws away at the appendage like some careless lumberjack. She doesn't even flinch as blood sprays in her face, crouch-walking along her victim's back as she shows just how unqualified a surgeon she would be. Emily becomes sick to her stomach as she watches the first wing give way, Mint tossing it like a heap of biological trash and twisting on her heels to start on the other one. Apparently adapted to the subtleties of wing amputation, she rushes through this one in a flurry of blood and feather-type patches to get this done as soon as possible.

"Oh, god..." Emily mutters, holding back the vomit starting to find its way to her throat as the second wing drifts the floor. Her bloody face completely devoid of anything even resembling remorse, Mint unexpectedly walks right over the now-unconscious red-haired girl to Emily and punches her right in the stomach.

"Enough gawking," Mint states, lifting a staggered and winded Emily over her shoulder like a burlap sack, "We're leaving."

"Leave her," Maleficent orders out of the blue. Mint spins to face her mistress, dizzying Emily with such a sudden jerk. Combined with the horror of the scene, the gut punch, and the combined stench of their filthy outfits, it is only inevitable for her to hurl the sparse contents of her stomach in spite of herself. How undignified.

"But the agreement..." Mint says as she walks across the room and crouches to pick something up, her voice doubtful of her superior's rationality.

"If she is the one," Maleficent starts, her voice authoritative, "Darkside will spare her life; it has no other choice. She will pass through to the other side and the Destroyer will no doubt claim her on her own once awakened. Don't deny her these last moments with her poorly-chosen friends."

"I really hope you know what you're doing..." Mint sighs as she stands back up, carelessly dropping Emily onto her back with another thud that knocks the wind out of her.

While anyone who has ever met her would expect Maleficent with her flair for the dramatic to make one final speech, both she and her apprentice teleport away in those characteristic clouds of black smoke. Thoroughly defeated and feeling awful beyond belief, Emily lies there as tears fill her eyes. Would all this have not happened had she not told that girl in black to piss off? It seems pretty unmistakable that she was the one that sent these people here; only she would demand Emily be kept alive and well, after all. So despite all of Emily's desire to be a good companion, good comrade, and good friend to those on the side of good, it turns out she's the worst thing to ever happen to everyone she has ever met. No way she'll ever be accepted now...

As she blinks out a pool of tears, something from behind enters her blurry vision. The glare of so much water in her eyes casts this figure as some vague pink humanoid, appearing almost as an angelic figure through soft, delicate features visible even through the haze. Emily doesn't even need to finish wiping her eyes to realize that this is none other than Chou, here way too late to be of any use but still reassuring just through presence alone. She looks quite rattled and queasy, but still somehow keeps herself from that typical Feylinus panic. She really has grown after all these months.

"Chou," Emily says, coughing up a little as the wind irritates her throat, "Welcome to the party."

"I'm sorry," Chou softly says, kneeling over and grabbing Emily's exposed arm. With a soft pink light and a wave of soothing relief, all the pain and queasiness vanishes right alongside the gashes and bruises. Not like being healed is going to do a whole lot but keep her comfortable for her incoming meeting with Darkside... wait a second...

"Chou," Emily starts, picking herself up and gently tugging her towards the threatening steel box, "Can you shift something without going with it?"

"What?" Chou asks, apparently not grasping the question right away, "...I don't know. I've never tried."

"Well, now's your first chance," Emily says, looking over the present Maleficent left behind. While it does have an LCD screen, it frustratingly doesn't have a time readout like so many bad action movies and video games have taught her. Not like she would delay even a second no matter how much time was actually on the clock. A minute or a year, she wants this thing far, far away.

"What is this?" Chou asks, staring at the machine with fascination.

"It's a bomb," Emily quickly answers, "You remember where Discord is, right?"

"Yes..." Chou says, now looking very uncomfortable for some reason.

"Send this to Discord," Emily requests, gesturing to the weapon of mass destruction at her feet.

"...but... there are people there..." Chou says, her lip quivering at the thought.

"Who cares?" Emily dismisses, "Nobody but criminals and terrorists care what happens to Discord. Nobody. Their only exports are misery and the things that make blue and white possible, so we'd be doing the universe a favor. Besides, someone there is going to eventually invent this same bomb and accidentally set it off, so we're just speeding it up."

"...but I can't..." Chou declares, tears forming in her eyes. Seems she doesn't quite appreciate the situation at hand. Time for more persuasive techniques.

"It's us or them," Emily harshly chides, "If you don't send it away, you will have killed us all. You care about us, right?"

"Isn't there another way?" Chou asks through heavy breaths, officially crying now. Well, isn't it peachy how everything is literally going straight to hell by the inability of a subordinate? Seems to be a recurring theme today: Mint failed Maleficent by proving useless in suicide counseling, Emily fails both Riku and Kairi by proving useless in provocation, and now Chou will fail Emily by proving useless in general. Knowing full well that neither reasoning nor guilt will get this task finished, it's time for blunt, desperate measures.

"Chou," Emily starts, focusing her energy into her voice, "Shift the bomb to Discord."

"But-" Chou meekly attempts, shying away just a little from Emily's piercing gaze.

"Now!" Emily shouts, feeling a wave of discomfort in her actions.

"I-" Chou attempts again, almost blubbering through her waterfall of tears.

"DO IT, GODDAMMIT!" Emily shouts through involuntary tears of her own, Chou wincing as she looks away in terror. With a few seconds of further uncontrollable sobbing, she eventually steps to a side and raises her arms over the steel box as her eyes start softly glowing pink. Well, if it works...

"Hold your horses, my pink friend," calls out a familiar voice. Showing up way too late and in too much battle-damaged disarray to ever be fashionable, Axel walks up behind Chou and gently places a hand on her shoulder. This simple action seems to both calm her nerves and stop her from shifting the bomb away, her eyes gradually dimming back to normal. What the hell is he doing?

"What about the bomb?" Emily asks, a little annoyed by Axel's intrusion but thankful a real expert is now present. Proving his capability of some kind of super scientist, he starts casually typing into the keypad at about a hundred words per minute.

"I got it," Axel flatly says, the bomb's computer making these half-finished chirping noises, "By the way, your brilliant idea of dumping it on Discord is just... wow. That is so politically incorrect and senselessly negligent, it's amazing. I mean sure, I don't think a whole lot of the universe will shed many tears over the loss of Discord, but I don't think even Xehanort would ever consider something like that just to get rid of a minor nuisance like this... at least not without putting recorders up, anyway. You're my kind of gal, Kiko."

"...I'm sorry," Emily apologizes, ashamed she could ever be compared to Xehanort of all people. Maybe it is a bit callous to write a whole planet off even if it's screwed up beyond redemption...

"Besides," Axel continues in an absent-minded voice as he focuses his attention on the screen, "They didn't set this up properly, so you would have just sent our favorite insanos some dangerous new tech. You see, Xemnas Corp. detonator control units like this have unique multi-layer logins with decoy screens just in case they fall in enemy hands. It's a lot easier if they leave behind a dud they think is armed than the usual bricking that might keep it from being used for a while, but also keeps it in their hands to try and jury-rig into working. Whoever set this one up is laaaaa~zy because it's only one screen deep. They didn't even _try_ to break it. Lucky we built backdoors into everything that needs frame-specific key presses."

"Maleficent left it behind," Emily explains upon Axel's deaf ears. Thinking about it, it really is kind of weird that Maleficent and Mint would even be able to get so far in setting up a complex bomb like this. Sure, they've shown more than enough willingness to employ technology when it's better suited than magic and work alongside mad scientists, but for them to crack even just one layer of a professionally-designed computer system after losing Goldwater? Their pet doctor must have given them obviously faulty written directions some time in the past: there's no other explanation.

After thousands of key presses in an oddly rhythmic pattern, the computer makes some three note victory chime as the bomb starts glowing with dark purple energy and flushing the inky blackness through its tubes at an alarming rate. What the...

"There we go," Axel says, tapping the screen to signify his success, "All set."

"What?" Emily asks in total shock, gawking at Axel as he casually walks over to Kairi.

"Blue and white..." Axel explains, pausing a second as he picks up and looks over a severed wing, "...or, as they unofficially call themselves in their chatter, 'The Matriarchy' sent out a follow-up fleet just a few minutes ago. I _thought_ I cracked their passive status line and blocked their communications, but I guess they're not so easily fooled. They'll be landing in about twelve hours, so we need to be on this ship out of the system in less than four. It's a good thing Maleficent left this little present here because it saves us the trouble of moving a bomb down from the ship."

"Oh..." Emily says. Axel makes this kind of gloomy sigh as he tosses the appendage aside, gently turning Kairi over and picking her up. She's starting to look a little pale and glazey-eyed; no doubt a result from the excessive bleeding. One only hopes it's not too late.

"So Maleficent was here..." Axel ponders as he walks to one of the few unlooted sections of the lab, voice just as gloomy, "She certainly kicked our asses, huh? Tore off my poor little Kairi's wings and weapon, left Riku in a corrupted mess, and Xion... where is Xion?"

"...I don't know," Emily admits, regret filling inside her, "She took a laser to the back and we crash landed in an office. She kept asking me to go on my own and said she would be fine. I went out, killed Cenari, and when I came back, all I found was blood and feathers."

"It sucks, doesn't it?" Axel asks out of the blue, placing Kairi face-down on a lab table at the far corner of the room and pulling some surgical tools from a nearby drawer.

"...what?" Emily says as she follows, not really registering what he's saying. Isn't it blatantly obvious everything about this situation 'sucks'? Why even say something like that?

"Not knowing what happened to Xion," Axel continues, spraying some clear liquid on Kairi's back that still makes her wince even through her unconsciousness, "You'd hope she found her way to safety, but she's an imperfect replica of Sora as evidenced by the fact that she's the wrong sex. As we learned when we repeated the process and sent the duplicate Xion to fight Roxas, very... _weird_ things happen when they're dying. Knowing anything is possible, she's going to be forever both dead and alive in our minds until we find her and since we need to leave in a few hours regardless if we do, those odds are going to sink like a rock."

"...and we're just going to leave her here?" Emily asks, kind of already knowing the answer but wanting Axel to say it himself. He simply ignores her as he tends to Kairi's wounds, mending them with some kind of glowing blue blowtorch and lots more clear liquid of some kind. Only upon finishing with an injection of yet more clear liquid does he beat Emily to breaking the silence.

"Xion is trained in Corridor usage," Axel continues, reopening the cabinet door and carelessly shuffling through the vials of clear liquid, "Even then, if she gets caught in the Darkside rampage, the Heartless are only drawn to those with hearts. Kind of a cold comfort since there are things in the Realm of Darkness less picky and way worse than the Heartless, but you have to slip a few layers in before you'd see them. Still, all of this might be moot because I'm dispatching all the robots to look for her while they pack up... ah, here we go."

With a victorious hum, Axel pulls out what appears to be a gigantic flask half-full of a glowing, swirling white fluid hooked up to a painfully large syringe at least 30 centimeters long: the kind of device only the most nightmarish medical-themed horror films would ever dare to dream up. With the device worryingly clicking and clacking with each step, Axel walks over to a convulsing, darkness-infected Riku and pins him down with one knee on his chest. Seems kind of reckless to touch the swirling corruption without any protection, but he obvious knows what he's doing.

Without even the slightest change of expression, Axel lifts the giant syringe with both hands over his head and plunges it down in one dire stabbing motion. Just as the needle pierces Riku's chest, Axel nearly gets bounced off by the convulsive thrashing and wailing. Still, he holds steady and keeps the syringe stable, the vial filling with blood that has taken on an inky blackness. Bright miniature explosions of both light and darkness splatter the fluids in the vial, intermingling and mixing into some kind of silvery metallic substance. After half a minute of this violent chemical reaction, it settles and solidifies in time with Riku going limp once more. What the...

"I never thought this invention would ever get used," Axel comments, tossing the apparatus aside and backing off of the limp white-haired boy, "Riku, you trailblazer, you."

"What did you just do?" Emily asks, walking over to her discarded knives and picking them up. May as well start packing up now.

"Siphoned the excess darkness out of him," Axel answers, pulling his usual large PDA out of a pocket and furiously tapping into it, "...kind of at a loss for words right now. Both Maleficent and 'The Matriarchy' found us even at what Grandmaster called 'the ass corner of the universe', so we don't have any real place we can settle down. They smashed all my bio-generators, so I can't exactly go forward with my secret Daeh supply plan just yet... although they're pretty forgiving, so maybe? I don't know. At least 'The Matriarchy' were stupid enough to use stolen Xemnas Corp. technology in nearly every one of those systems... although a lot of that was already based on stolen ideas, so make of that what you will... okay, set. Kiko?"

"Yes?" Emily says as she notices Chou out of the corner of her eye. Seems she's just standing there and staring blankly, not even reacting to the ominously whirring bomb right by her. Obviously just a little frazzled...

"...I don't know," Axel shrugs, pocketing the PDA and bending over to pick Riku up, "Nevermind. Please gently carry Kairi and walk with me to the ship's medical bay. Be careful: she has lost a _lot_ of blood."

"Okay..." Emily says as she complies, confused about what he might have been thinking about before. The whole experience does kind of have this numbing effect. It's hard to believe that some total unknown like Mint could ever hold off and defeat both Riku and Kairi at the same time, but then again, she's obviously a worthy opponent if Maleficent is willing to invest so much time in training her. Who knows... maybe she'll be the one to realize Maleficent's rather vague, shady goals of universal domination? Why does Maleficent even want to conquer the universe, anyway? That's the kind of goal political and religious zealots like 'The Matriarchy' would desire and she has shown little tendency in either direction...

"You, too, Chou," Axel requests, gently shifting Riku to one hand as he uses the other to type into the lift's keypad, "But anyway... we need time to cool off, think about what just happened, and plan for the future. A lot of bad things might have happened, but think on the bright side!"

"...bright side?" Emily asks in disbelief, her question punctuated by the ding of the intrusive elevator tube.

"We now have the tools to destroy 'The Matriarchy'."


	79. Transportation Security Administration

One of the common trappings of speculative fiction is the idea of the forsaken zone. A city, country, continent, planet, or even whole alternate reality where absolutely nothing good happens and one is advised to stay as far away as possible. Whether it be Hell, Mordor, or North Korea, it always seems kind of surprising such places could ever independently maintain themselves or even justify their own existence as anything but pits of misery. The kind of imaginary place that can only exist within the minds of sick and twisted individuals, unencumbered by such things as balance and practicality.

Sadly, it appears this punyverse has more than its fair share of these forsaken areas. One such planet is a floating volcanic rock, its brittle black shell snaking with rivers of flowing magma and its harsh red sky dimmed by a constant stream of black smoke. Despite its outward appearance, it still paradoxically has a breathable atmosphere and enough solidarity to support not only two people striding across its surface, but also a simple blue and white skiff of a space ship. Whether by magic, technology, or just some violation of all known physics, there isn't even the slightest mirage to mark what should be intense, instantly-incinerating convection. Lucky for them.

"I hate this place..." mutters one of the two figures under her breath, brushing some soot off of her gaudy green dress. As brazen and tawdry as her outfit may be, she at least has the good sense to wear short sleeves; something her black-cloaked, sceptre-wielding companion obviously disagrees about. Then again, this person is also something other than human, so she probably doesn't need such petty things as body temperature regulation. And yet, the girl in green also has a cloth-wrapped crystal sword strapped to her back and a steel briefcase affixed over her behind, so she's not exactly ideal, either.

The two stride over the hill to a recessed dip, the brittle ground giving way to ornamental onyx of an obviously intentional nature. Six pillars surround this pit, with grooves connecting them in a hexagonal manner. Three of these structures also send similar lines towards a single point in the middle of the pit, the whole thing appearing not unlike a simple drawn cube when viewed from above. Jutting from this convergence point is none other than the ancient coffin of the so-called 'ancient destroyer', appearing almost monolithic and most certainly foreboding in every last ominous angle of its triangular, prismatic shape.

"Well, here we are..." the green-clad girl sighs, reaching back and unhooking the briefcase, "...somebody is totally going to jump out and stop us now, aren't they?"

"My dear apprentice," the black-cloaked figure coldly comments, "Anyone who might have ever wished to stop us now is dead, in hiding, or securing their tenuous power base. Why would you expect such a thing?"

"You don't exactly have that great a track record for completing big plans like this..." Green only half-boldly states, bringing the case forward, "Which goes where?"

Before another word needs to be uttered, some invisible force yanks the steel case out of Green's hands. The container unlatches and spills its contents out, the six prisms hovering away as the case flops onto the ground. With a very deliberate gliding motion across the still air, the six red keystones float with perfect timing bringing all of them above their pillars simultaneously. Still in perfect harmony, the prisms slowly descend into their slots, the surprisingly loud sound of crystal scraping gemstone resonating throughout the air. As the keystones vanish into their pillars, the area goes quiet for what seems like an eternity. Perhaps something was missed?

"...that's it?" Green quips, turning to face her apparent mistress. Before any response can come out, dark purple electricity starts sporadically arcing between the pillars and the prismatic coffin, initially so innocuous as to almost be missed. It doesn't take too long before it starts escalating, that signature buzzing sound growing to ear-piercing levels. A sphere of distortion starts to surround the area as the coffin is enveloped in what appears to be a deep purple nucleus, the whole thing appearing as if a plasma globe. The flood of flowing energy paradoxically seems to make the whole area darker the more intense it gets; as if it's sucking the light out of the already-dim area.

Suddenly, the sphere bursts upon the weight of its sheer density. With a shockwave completely contained in its space, it obliterates the pillars and shatters the ground into a million billion shards. The very physics of this enclosed space seem to go on holiday as everything floats and falls in discordant directions, swirling as the plasma energy continues to bombard the walls of distortion. With one final anti-flash that throws the debris back down to the ground, all the energy implodes into the coffin and snaps back into a stark silence.

With a single long second of inactivity, the coffin then bursts apart into three segments that fall down like flower petals; a rather simple and anticlimactic end to such a flashy display of overwhelming power. The black-clad girl continues floating without gravity in a light sphere of energy, her eyes closed and pose unbroken as the anti-radiance around her subsides. For someone rumored to be so destructive, she almost looks pure and innocent in this position. It takes a few seconds before gravity remembers its role, collapsing her to the ground in a heap of her own large, strangely unsullied black dress. All this effort to free her and still, she cannot move.

"...so much pomp and circumstance," the girl in black chuckles softly into her dress, lightly squeezing her fabric with her fingers, "I haven't felt the way... I feel today... in so long, it's hard for me to specify..."

The girl continues to lie in a pile of her clothing, wistfully rubbing her cheek against it with eyes closed and expression content. A warm, sensual look of one that seems less concerned of her greater release and is perfectly fine enjoying the simplest personal freedom. After an awkward few minutes of silence save the near-inaudible grazing of skin of fabric, Green takes a step forward and stops just short of the dusty onyx ground upon her mistress tilting her sceptre in to block.

This near-breach of the apparently sacred space prompts the girl in black to gently extend her arms to the side, both her body and some of the nearby debris hovering upright a few meters into the air. Her dress rearranges and straightens itself out, fluttering along with her hair as she bends one leg at the knee and extends the toes of the other towards the ground. Appearing as a graceful dancer with eyes still closed and face innocent, she slowly descends back down in a deliberate, physics-defying manner. Upon her toes touching the ground, the floating debris around her resumes their obedience to gravity along with her dress and hair.

"...what do you want?" the girl in black finally asks, still keeping her eyes closed and chin down.

"In accordance with the ancient contract," the inhuman woman in black robes recites, striding into the dusty pit at a deliberate pace, "I release you from your prison in exchange for your eternal servitude. What shall I call you?"

"...call me Anna," the girl in black responds, eyes still closed, "Anna Molly."

"Anna Molly," the sickly woman continues, stopping two meters away, "I, Maleficent, have proven myself the impetus for your release and assume my role as your mistress. Bow before me."

"So you have..." Anna sighs, shifting her shoulders around in such a way that slips her dress to the ground. Her unnatural pale skin and youthful form contrasts with the black of her straight shoulder-length hair, minimalistic, limbless, backless leotard, and tattered wings too small to be of any apparent use. With her heavily-scarred body mostly exposed and eyes still closed, she steps over the heap of cloth around her feet and crouches down in front of her new mistress.

"Prove yourself," Maleficent flatly states, tapping her sceptre six times while gesturing towards six evenly-spaced areas in a half-circle behind Anna. Six blobs of inky darkness pool in from nothingness at each of the six points, gushing upwards like geysers and coalescing into vague humanoid shapes. They solidify into a set of beasts resembling chunky three meter tall humans, their heads and hands replaced with those of vicious beasts. Wolf, bull, hawk, snake, tiger, and shark, they appear almost like the forms an ancient Pagan religion would ascribe to their deities.

With forms set and yellow eyes glowing with rage, they all start shambling towards Anna with threatening claws, jaws, talons, and horns at the ready. Maleficent gradually backs away as these menacing figures move in for the kill, her steely gaze piercing right through the fallen angel. Eyes still closed and expression completely unconcerned, Anna holds her kneeling position as if to offer herself to the monsters. All at once, the six lunge in for the kill, but all stop within a meter of sinking their jagged implements into the apparently-defenseless girl; as if they all suddenly realized who she is and lost the nerve to follow through.

Everything and everyone just kind of locks in place for an awkwardly long time, the beasts finally backing off in sync with Anna as she stands up. With eyes still closed and expression still unconcerned, she displays a calm that seems to infect even the Heartless surrounding her. While the other five can do little more than watch, the hawk beast shows enough courtesy to kneel as she turns to face it.

"Do you really expect to sic my own children on me?" Anna moodily comments, hugging the bird's head into her flat chest while stroking its plume and rubbing her cheek into its neck. A warm, sensual moment between a twisted monster of darkness and a heavily wounded fallen angel. Without even the tiniest flinch of expression, she suddenly jabs her hand right through its hide and tears its hollow spine out in one swift motion that sprays a bucket of inky black blood. With the beast screeching in pain and yet not retaliating, Anna tosses the sickly bones aside and shoves the creature prone on its back.

With eyes still closed and expression still pure, she swings her bloodstained hand in a half-circle with index and middle finger extended without so much as a tilt of anything else. As it passes each Heartless, their jugulars erupt in sprays of liquid darkness all on their own. As these beasts roar and writhe on their slow descents prone on their backs, all six start pouring white light out of their rapidly decaying forms. In one supernova of a combined flash, they vaporize into nothingness, leaving behind six of those signature pinkish hearts.

And yet, they don't dissipate into nothingness like they usually do, instead just spinning and hanging in the air. Anna folds her arms over her chest and nods her head down, her body levitating as her torn wings flutter ever so softly. Vapor trails of dark purple dust start flowing out of the unnatural floating objects, coalescing around Anna like smoke around an orb. Just as her ascent finishes in the middle of the six pinkish hearts, they shatter all at once into a fine mist and flow into a rapidly forming cocoon of dark purple energy around her. The kind of swirling, fluidic, chaotic mess of similar colors appearing not unlike oil on a road.

With another burst rivaling that of a supernova, the energy shield shatters into tiny meteor fragments and dissipates into nothingness. From out of her broken cocoon emerges Anna, but the experience has left her changed. No longer a tattered, broken little girl, her skin is now purified and her wings restored to their majestic two meter span. Her hair, once a matted black, now glistens like onyx with the occasional streak of pearly white. While still possessing the same slender, flat-chested, near-androgynous figure as before, her black leotard is now supplemented by a full, flowing dress. Similar to the one sealed with her, but quite a bit more intricate with white lace, white trim, and white gemstones all along her most sensuous contours. A person genuinely deserving of the title 'ancient destroyer'.

"Is this more up to your expectations?" Anna asks, stretching and posing with eyes still closed. Maleficent reaches behind her shoulder and gestures her companion over, Green missing it as she stares in sheer shock. As tough as she may look with her buff physique and imposing stance, it seems seeing six of what might have been the finest Heartless allowing themselves to be effortlessly sacrificed is too much even for her. Maleficent, while looking visibly irritated, refrains from so much as even a second gesture. It takes a minute or two more of awkward silence before it gets broken.

"You have something for me..." Anna prompts, gesturing to Green while keeping her eyes ever closed, "...rapist."

Green breaks out of her stupor with that one word, now looking kind of shifty and guilty; as if a long forgotten memory has emerged within. Still, she builds up enough courage to walk into the dusty pit, carefully unstrapping the crystal weapon from her back and unraveling it without ever touching the sword itself. With hands wrapped in the once-sheathing cloth, Green stops just a few meters short of the dark angel and offers the mythic blade. With clarity and grace in her every movement, Anna gently reaches to the sword and wills it to levitate into her hand. With a few light swings that sparks a soft red glow within, she brings it vertically up to her face with eyes still closed.

"Shhhhh, don't worry," Anna moodily whispers into the sword, her lips close enough to almost appear as a kiss, "You may have been lost so long, seeking new owners one after the other and always thwarted by fate to forever fail at your task, but never fear. Mommy's here, ready to restore you from your vulgar form to your original luster and use you properly once again."

With a sudden twitch that sends a surge of energy out, Anna swings the weapon in a circular arc to her side. All at once, it reforms and extends itself from its original sword form into a two meter long polearm. With a jagged crystal tip and an unnaturally smooth shaft, it looks as mythic as it is dangerous. Now finally content in the unification of both form and weapon, Anna finally opens her swirling amethyst eyes and casts a smug glance up to the heavens.

"You didn't _really_ think I'd ever let you go, did you?"

* * *

**.**

* * *

Just like a dozen times before, Marle woozily stirs from her sleep with so much on her mind. So despite that whole epic battle between the wills, she really hasn't lost her connection with the girl in black? Has she been continuing to protect her in the shadows, instilling only the surface of her former pitiful autistic self but guiding her hand as she overcame Cenari? As much as she'd like to believe that she could have taken the astronaut on her own, even she doesn't have so much suspension of disbelief in spite of all she has seen. Of course, now that the girl in black is free and restored to her valkyrie-reminiscent dark angel glory, it's probably a trivial affair for her to seek out and claim Marle... for what, who knows?

Not like it would be an easy task even for someone of her prodigious talent. Marle tilts her head back up and looks through the hood of her thick cloak to confirm her surroundings. It appears during her sleep, she has been moved off the transport ship and is now riding an elevated monorail over a body of water. Perfect blue skies with just enough cloud cover to keep the climate moist and cool, the kind of perfection that can only be ensured by climate control systems; the kind only a filthy rich planet like Amaterasu is able to afford.

A glance down confirms her oversized aquamarine cloak embedded with glowing diodes, her hands and legs bound by stiff blue shackles controlled by tiny LCD computer controls. Just like all the other people with faces obscured by their hoods, their monotony broken up by the occasional standing guard in blue and white power-armor holding a menacing assault rifle of equal tech. It would certainly take a non-trivial effort on even the part of this 'Anna' to break through the mechanized military of blue and white.

"We will be arriving at the Susanoo Processing Center in one minute," announces a female voice over the PA system, three note chimes bookending the statement. Cold, sterile, bureaucratic.

Skyscrapers start drifting past the windows, just as clean and attractive as they were in her previous visits. Not like she really gets to appreciate them because the once-stationary guards start pacing down the aisles and checking each passenger by their tags hanging on loose necklaces. More mundane looking personnel, dressed down to simple jumpsuits but still fully masked and uniformed, start patrolling the the aisles as well. With tablet computers in hand, they spend quite a bit more time checking the occasional person while verbally confirming their identities. The kind of person that is now looking over Marle with quite a bit more scrutiny than anyone else on the train.

"Passenger D2-82-45-EA-B9-43-57-00," says a low pitched, robotically-processed male voice from the faceless helmet, "Given name 'Marle'. Confirm."

"Yes," Marle softly answers, looking down into her lap.

"Management has placed you on Immediate Priority," the masked man continues, crouching down and unlatching the leg shackles with a few key presses, "You will be the first to be processed upon arrival."

"Yes, sir..." Marle gloomily sighs, looking away from the menacing figure. As the man in the jumpsuit walks away with disabled shackle in hand, two of the heavy armor guards walk in from either direction and stop beside Marle just as the train comes to a stop. With a chime and brief announcement of arrival, the two guards lift Marle up to her feet by her shoulders and latch a leash onto the arm shackles. With a gentle shove of the rifle butt to her back, Marle follows as they lead her off the train and tries her best not to trip over this impractically huge cloak. Such a great welcome.

Upon exiting the neon-lined corridors of the monorail, Marle emerges into the neon-lined, cold teal ceramic terminal station. Everything has the kind of contoured, streamlined look that reflects an ultimate conclusion of all technological development. A sterile, lifeless place, devoid of all art, architecture, personality, and style. No history, no tradition: only endless computer consoles and everybody wearing the same two repetitive outfits. Further proof of Anna's unlikeliness of claiming her trophy can be found in the fact that there are about three dozen power-armor guards in just this reception area alone.

With a mechanical sameness to their steps, the two escorts lead Marle right past the long line of same-cloaked people at one of the booths and to what appears to be a service door. Off the beaten path and certainly not a structure calling attention to itself, it's barely even visible but as it slides back and to the side. Unlike the brightly lit room before it, the hallways of this private area has that old cement-wall look that, while designed less for aesthetics and more for easy cleaning by hose, shows so much more personality. It looks like something actually used by people rather than glorified machines.

After a few hundred meters in these old service corridors, the guards bring Marle through a battered steel door into an old-fashioned interrogation room. Dirty steel table, rickety steel chairs, and an obvious two-way mirror lining the wall to the side. Looks like something straight out of a modern-day police drama: the kind of place where the suspect will be beaten to a pulp by the grizzled cop upon just one iota of resistance. The two guards plop Marle into the uncomfortable chair, removing the leash and taking positions on either side of the door. They even have their rifles across their chest pointing at a slightly upwards angle towards the door; obviously for the intimidation factor.

Barely takes a minute or two before it opens to reveal one of the jumpsuit guys, briefcase in one hand and tablet computer in the other. Predictably, he takes a seat opposite of Marle, sparing the usual cliche of putting a gun on the table. Not like Marle would ever stand a chance with shackles on her hands and those two guards watching her intently.

"Welcome to Amaterasu, 'Marle'," the man says in a completely sterile tone, opening the briefcase to reveal a built-in laptop, "Did you have a pleasant trip?"

"Simply marvelous," Marle sarcastically replies, looking down into the table. Sure are a lot of coffee stains here...

"I hope you don't find my choice of room too vulgar," the man continues, "The primary facilities are quite a bit cozier, but a special girl like yourself is entitled to a little more... isolation, don't you agree?"

"I guess," Marle shrugs.

"Is there anything you'd like to confess before we start?" the man asks in a prodding tone.

"Zilch," Marle curtly replies.

"Alright, then," the man continues, tapping into the laptop at a decent clip, "Before I turn you over to my superiors, I need to confirm your identity one hundred ten percent. It says here in your application you are a model. Mind if I check you out?"

Without saying a word, Marle lifts her shackled arms and plops them down onto the table with a clunk. The nonverbal message doesn't even take a second to register with the man opposite her.

"Why are the shackles still on?" the man in the jumpsuit asks behind him, sounding only the tiniest bit miffed.

"SOP," say the heavily processed voices of both the guards in unison without the slightest delay.

"Well, it's obviously not SOP if we're all the way out _here_, are we?" the man asks rhetorically, "Take them off."

With what would be an apprehensive glance to each other if only they had faces, one of the guards walks over to Marle and taps in a combination on the shackles. With her binds removed, Marle swings her hood back and allows her luscious gold hair to drop down in perfectly combed clumps. She gives her warmest smile while slightly tilting her head to the side, doing her best to show warmth, compassion, and also a sense of mystery. The man holds up his tablet computer at Marle while glancing between it, her face, and his laptop. Takes a while before he finally seems content with the results.

"Well..." the man continues, placing the tablet down, "You're exactly, completely, perfectly what was requested by management for the latest propaganda line and your papers, history, and biometrics all check out. Perfect health, perfect genetics, perfect fitness, perfect resume... you almost seem _too_ good to be true, but I suppose management wouldn't settle for anything less."

"Why, thank you," Marle chokes out, beaming at the man.

"It's a shame I'm just a processing clerk," the man moodily comments, "To have a beautiful wife like yourself: that would be my greatest pleasure in life. No doubt someone with social power like your's is destined for someone equalled in political power: perhaps even the big boss. Such a marriage would please the people so."

"I'm sure you'll find your special someone," Marle sarcastically responds, bringing her hood back over her head, "Just not me, of course."

"Okay, then," the man wraps up in an official tone, closing his laptop, "That should be all. I apologize for the excessive security and any unpleasantries as a result, but there are a lot of people out there trying to get in that want us so very, very dead. You understand, don't you?"

"Of course," Marle says with a private smirk to herself, "My agent told me all about the situation."

"It seems you're scheduled for a meeting in the hour," the man says, standing up and backing away from the table, "I'd offer to personally see you there, but it seems you already have your transport scheduled."

"A beautiful flower like me cannot _bare_ to ride in a salaryman's sedan," Marle comments as she rises from her seat, trying just a bit too hard to keep up this image. The two guards show barely any more respect as they herd Marle out the door, refraining from the shackles but still prodding her along. Well, if Standard Operating Procedure is so important to them, what can she really do about it? Through the corridors, back into the terminal, and past the various booths they go, emerging in the spacious but still oh-so-clinical lobby. Only upon reaching the expansive, milky glass doors do they finally back off.

"Your ride awaits," one of the guards states with robotic simplicity, both of them about-facing and heading back from where they came. Well, it was a lot of trouble, but Marle succeeded in immigrating to Amaterasu without a hitch. With freedom secure and a glamorous ride awaiting her, she instead turns around and searches the lobby for something she has needed for a very long time: a bathroom. Of course, there's one not too far away and after taking care of the usual business in the also sterile, overly-technological facilities, she feels as if a great burden has been lifted.

With that out of the way, she heads through the glassy front doors to find a stretch limo parked at the nearly-deserted curb beside a well-dressed driver holding a sign with her name on it. She certainly could get used to this jet set lifestyle. Marle pulls back her hood as she slowly approaches the limo, mustering up as much grace as possible for all the security cameras watching her intently.

"G'day, m'lady," mumbles the driver as he pockets the sign, reaching over and opening the door for her. The kind of person that has no doubt dealt with enough high-in-the-clouds VIPs to hold a jaded resentment of everybody he's employed to ferry. After all, one photo shoot probably pays more than he gets a year.

Marle ignores him as she steps inside the spacious limo, taking a seat in a plush black leather chair. It takes a second for her to register none other than Axel way down at the other end, almost blending into the shadows. He's certainly dressed for the occasion with a business suit undone just enough to look like a fashion mogul, his hair also dyed blonde and done up in wild spikes that goes great with his sunglasses.

"Walking like a man," Axel softly says to himself in near-monotone, no doubt giving that signature Nobody stare, "Hitting like a hammer, she's a juvenile scam: never was a quitter. Tasty like a raindrop... she's got _the look_."

Marle ignores him as she starts unbuttoning and unlatching her garb, the heavy synthesis of cloth and circuitry starting to wear her out just a little. She can't exactly walk into a high stakes meeting wearing an immigrant's cloak, can she? With the last hook, the thick mass of fabric collapses into the seat to reveal her in a rather modest white bustiere and girdle. Sure is nice of blue and white to insist on so little visible skin. Marle immediately slips a hand under her bra to fix something that has been bugging her a very, very long time.

"Did you _really_ have to put this chip _right_ on my nipple?" Marle peevishly asks, pulling out a small circuit board adorned with a blue gemstone, "It's the most sensitive part of my body and having a chunk of silicon jabbing into it is not fun."

"Just toss it," Axel responds absent-mindedly, Marle more than happy to comply, "Mental-imprint name-ident is computationally expensive: at least thirty petaflops and several terabytes of bandwidth. It makes sense for border control when profiling immigrants, but they're not going to waste the bandwidth and clock cycles now that you're cleared with a unique RFID card that only takes a couple megaflops and megabytes to confirm. You remember the-"

"Wait until the boss disables the room's security before taking the shot," Emily sighs, checking around the cabin for her next outfit. It takes a few seconds before she realizes there's a garment bag right behind her legs; funny how easy it is to miss the things so close by. She dutifully unfolds and unzips it, taking out a very exotic, intricate blue and white silk outfit evocative of a desert princess. While largely translucent in the arms, collarbone, and belly, the key element is its total concealment of her lower back; this mission would not work otherwise.

"Does nobody question why I'm wearing something like this to a propaganda audition?" Emily asks, slipping her legs into the almost-too-tight harem pants.

"Does nobody question why every nubile young model is seeing the big boss instead of an appropriate public relations officer?" Axel counters, shrugging his shoulders, "I think they've come to an understanding what's _really_ going on at the top of that tower and turn a blind eye so long as it doesn't affect job performance. When _you're_ in charge of a planet, you, too, can bend the rules for a little indulgent decadence."

"Point taken," Emily concedes, slipping off the bustiere in favor of this puffy-yet-tight faux-halter top. She certainly feels kind of weird being a pretty muscular girl in something intended for a waifish, anorexic figure, but then again, everybody has their kinks. It definitely isn't anything that would appear in a publicly released material: a glance out the window proves as much. Nearly every available space for billboards and posters is plastered with an obvious propaganda pin-up in various textual languages. A veritable flood of what are no doubt lies, misinformation, and dark insinuations to brainwash the populace into supporting their oppressors.

One variety shows a view into the window of an urban residence. Hiding inside is a Yeo in traditional Daeh Yeo Mar attire, his features exaggerated towards the violent and grotesque as he clutches a battered, bleeding human child by her mouth. Outside this residence are two patrolling blue and white troopers, apparently unaware of what's transpiring inside. Of all the languages present, Emily can only read one:

They are still among us. Report all Yeo sightings to your local law enforcement immediately.

Another variety has a well-dressed man crouched down offering assurance to what appears to be the scarred, disfigured, bandaged girl from the other. Patriotic images of battle against demonic-looking Yeo and humans wearing Daeh Yeo Mar insignas are faded into the background, displaying all sorts of heroism against great evil. Just like the other, Emily is only able to read one of the lines:

The best and the brightest will find their place amongst us. Contact a recruitment officer today.

If one is the threat and the other is the invitation, then the last variety is the triumphant motivation. The story implied by the other two is given its middle, with blue and white troopers swarming the urban residence. The Yeo is pinned chest down against the ground with an assault rifle against his head, squawking and struggling in that same overly evil caricature. Not like it would be necessary since one little boy impaled into the wall and what seems to be his crying, heavily disfigured sister hammers in his vileness pretty well on their own. At least the survivor has the shoulder of a crouching trooper to cry into, a couple of his buddies poised and alert as they continue to scour the home. At least they recognize that such vivid, lurid imagery doesn't even need a caption to explain itself, instead offering some phone numbers and informational websites.

"Some posters, huh?" Emily comments somberly.

"If you think that's bad," Axel responds, "You should see what they're playing on the telly. I think even the adults get recurring nightmares."

As the car turns around a street corner, a contrast to the oppressive order in the form of an protest mob drifts into sight. Lines of police officers with nightsticks and riot shields stand sentry against a mass of outraged people, a few armored blue and white troopers standing behind them. Not only are these protesters brandying signs filled with dissident slogans and shouting mantras loud enough to pierce even the heavily insulated interior of this limo, they're also throwing crumpled posters and what appear to be globs of red paint at their oppressors. Oddly enough, outside of pushing back the occasional attempted intrusion, the police and troopers don't even react much to all of this: as if they aren't all that insulted by getting dirtied up in red.

"What's going on in there?" Emily asks, flinching as a glob of red paint smacks across her window.

"That's the parliament building," Axel answers, "Not a day has gone day without a protest out front. I heard they get so bad that they have to use helicopters to get all the politicians in and out."

"'The Matriarchy' really ruined this place," Emily moodily sighs, "Everything used to be so pretty and fun here. Everyone I saw was so happy. Now, they've paved over all the culture with colorless steel and depressing propaganda."

"That's what we're here to fix, aren't we?" Axel asks, shoving a large purse Emily's way, "Well, what _you're_ here to fix. Me? I'm just content to see them crash and burn... whelp, looks like we're here. You ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," Emily responds, lifting the purse with a determined grip. Axel sidles across the seat as the limo rolls to a stop, pulling out a larger gym bag of his own from under the bench. It takes a few seconds before the disgruntled driver opens the door for them, revealing a very fancy office building that surprisingly has absolutely no protesters anywhere; must be unlisted. With poise and confidence, Emily steps out with her best face forward. She slows down her approach towards the skyscraper just long enough to allow Axel to catch up to her side, the pair walking tall and proud towards the milky glass doors.

Just like the monorail terminal before, this lobby is completely devoid of anything resembling personality. Sure, it has quite a bit of propaganda and the signature flag plastered everywhere, but it doesn't feel like anything a real person would ever design. The usual row of metal detectors and rolling X-ray scanners line the entranceway, ready to fail in their efforts to filter out the bad apples and succeed in forcing cavity searches on six-year-olds. Despite this extensive security, there are only two fully armored guards at the two far ends. Apparently, cloth jumpsuit workers armed with pistols is good enough for working the machinery.

"Look alive, boys!" Axel yells in a pompous voice, gesturing to Emily, "Your new goddess has arrived!"

"I take it you're the ten o'clock," sighs one of the jumpsuit men in an orderly fashion, "Right this way."

Emily and Axel both walk up to their own lanes, rolling their bags through the scanners and walking through their arches in sync. As planned, Axel's detector goes wild, prompting two men with glowing blue batons to approach while a few further away ready their hands on their pistols. The armored guards don't seem too concerned, though.

"Sorry, forgot about my wallet," Axel offers, pulling out a solid gold money clip stuffed to its breaking point with cash and handing it to one of the men, "I want that back, by the way."

"Please hold your arms to the side, sir," the man closest to him orders in exasperation, starting his wave of the baton by Axel's head. Emily quietly grabs her purse as it rolls to the end of the conveyer belt while everybody else watches her 'manager' intently; she doesn't want them scrutinizing it too closely.

"Hey, man, watch the hair," Axel chides as he extends his arms out, grumbling a little at being subjected to a full body scan. While the batons predictably go off passing by the studded metal belt hidden by his untucked shirt, there is nothing else the scanners catch and their subsequent pat-down only reveals a box of mints and some hand lotion. The usual kind of false alarm that causes huge backups at the airport without anything of interest happening.

"He's clean," one of the baton men states, the other one reluctantly giving back the money clip before both of them head off. With the room back to its doldrum mood, Axel loudly sighs as he pockets the clip and picks up his bag.

"Typical security," Axel sighs just loud enough to be heard by all, siding up next to Emily and walking alongside her as they head down the lobby. As they approach the elevator, it dings open to reveal a familiar sight. Standing before them is a tech mage in full custom attire, the usual gleaming silver plates accentuating the androgynous figure and the mask a creepy human perfection. Emily makes the slightest inaudible gasp upon seeing this person before remembering that given the nature of this organization, it's almost assuredly a different person. Isn't mass anonymity great?

"Hello and welcome," greets the tech mage in a business-as-usual tone, "Mr. Fennyn, Marle. Twenty six minutes early."

"Hello... whoever you are," Axel says as he makes kind of a poking motion with two fingers, making a move towards the elevator. With palm forward, the tech mage blocks his path.

"Not you," the tech mage orders, gesturing to Emily, "Just her."

"What?" Axel protests right on cue, "You can't _possibly_ expect a model of Marle's universal appeal to go _anywhere_ without her agent."

"You read the sample contract, right?" the tech mage asks.

"I skimmed it," Axel dismissively admits with a roll of his eyes, "Don't you people understand that-"

"I'll be fine," Emily interrupts as she smiles warmly, just as scripted, "I can take care of myself."

Axel rises his fingers as he starts to say something, but after a few seconds of pensive thought with his mouth open, he calms himself down... or fakes calming himself down, rather.

"Sir," the tech mage starts, gesturing down one of the other hallways, "If you come this way, we'll get the paper work in order and start wiring the funds over."

Axel shrugs his shoulders in defeat and lets out a loud sigh, walking alongside the tech mage towards that foreboding passageway. After a few steps, he suddenly remembers something and slows down to a halt.

"Don't sign anything," Axel sternly says over her shoulder, making a dire pointing gesture at Emily in the process. Well, that went pretty much exactly as she imagined. After a few confused seconds, she walks into the open elevator with as much grace and dignity as she can muster for the cameras. With usual mechanical precision, the elevator doors close behind her before she even gets a chance to turn around. Sadly, there's no muzak to go along with the soft hum and gradual loft; did blue and white have to rob even that simple pleasure?

Before getting even halfway up the 140 floors, a loud beep emanates from Emily's purse. Just as practiced, she opens it up and shuffles through the various girly belongings to get at a hidden zipper. As expected, this hidden compartment contains a moderate-sized handgun of simple black steel construction, a pocket computer with a short wire, and a prismatic lining that is apparently key in fooling the scanners. She yanks both out, quickly checks the clip and chamber, and stuffs them inside her dress at the small of her back. Just as planned.

A few more seconds bring the elevator to the 137th floor, dinging open to reveal a pair of tech troopers standing perpendicular to the sliding door. Emily gives a warm but stand-offish smile to each as she walks past, the two turning and escorting her down this as-yet-unconverted hallway. This definitely used to be a universal manufacturing conglomerate judging by the various photos of businessmen at board meetings and looking over way-too-clean factories. No doubt the thick silver-plated door at the end of this hallway used to belong to an extremely overpaid, underworked chairman.

"Our leader will have you now," one of the men states with robotic tone, the two of them walking forward and pulling at the heavy handles. Well, now it's time to meet the new boss...


	80. Uprising

If there's one defining trait of corporate culture, it's conspicuous consumption. Executives already in a position of modern day aristocracy feel the need to spend the millions they make exploiting the masses on fast cars, big yachts, rare paintings, six-figure personal trainers promising Gerard Butler abs, and everything caked in precious metals and gemstones. After all, if their office chair does not cost more than the average person's dream car, insurance and all, what good are they?

One such chair adorns this office, standing at a monolithic two meters of black leather, mahogany, and softly glowing machinery visible under smoky panels of glass. Not only is this an expensive chair, it's an expensive chair of the future. The mahogany desk littered with small precious statues, chocolate-colored plush couch, bookshelves of ancient hardcovers, state of the art surround sound system, and all sorts of perfectly preserved paintings further hammer in that this used to belong to one very powerful executive. Now, it belongs to a very powerful military leader, facing the expansive window and talking into a phone with wire snaking around the chair.

"...you don't really need me to explain my reasoning, do you?" the figure says with total calmness, ambiguous in both gender and intent, "Everything that man touches turns into a public relations disaster, like some kind of retarded King Midas. I don't care if he used to be popular: those were the old days before any politician had real responsibility. Impeach him, force his resignation, and let the masses elect someone more suitable; somebody that won't run his mouth off on international television. You got that, love? Thank you, buh-bye."

With surprising accuracy, the figure tosses the phone over the top of the chair and right into a perfect landing with its base unit. Emily continues standing just outside the door, waiting for a signal from either this leader or the two guards to do something. It takes a surprisingly long time before anything of note happens.

"This her?" asks the androgynous voice from the other side of the sight-blocking chair.

"Just as requested," one of the two guards says in response.

"Excellent," responds the voice with a subdued happiness, "Both of you are dismissed."

"You're sure?" one of the guards counters. Kind of an odd question...

"Would I be ordering it if I wasn't?" asks the figure rhetorically, "Take a break, get some coffee, read some magazines, watch some TV in the break room, have a pull, whatever. Come back after lunch."

"At your bequest," say the two men simultaneously, nudging Emily gently into the room and closing the massive metal doors behind her. Point of no return once again. Emily gives her best smile as she gracefully poses to the back of the chair, placing her purse down with her bow. She needs to be ready to give her best impression once it turns around.

"Now, then..." the figure says, still facing the window, "'Marle'. You applied for the modeling position on our latest propaganda line and no doubt you're aware you have potential since you're here in my office right now. Tell me: why should I hire you?"

"Because I have _the look_," Emily responds as scripted, "I can be as proud, strong, and charismatic as you want, as much as you want. The people love me; they want to be my lover, my child, my best friend, or just flat out _me_. Even the staunchest dissident melts to my smile and my voice can make an Atheist find God."

"Verbose, huh?" the figure semi-sarcastically says, finally turning the chair around with arms crossed. While masked in a sleek, scaly helmet of blue and white, this person is apparently allowed the luxury of a silk white button-up shirt, blue pocketless vest, dark blue cloth pants, and black loafers. Definitely an important person if the standard no-skin uniform does not apply.

Emily goes through her scripted posing routine, combining modest bodybuilder poses with a sense of command presence and a heroic undertone. The kind of mythical figure that ancient civilizations would create spanning legends about. Sure, most ancient civilizations don't regard women as much more than idols and mothers, but that's only because they never met a girl like her... or at least that's what she tells herself, anyway. At least her intention seems to be getting through to her target.

"Yes, you could do..." the figure continues, gently reaching a hand up to stroke the chin of the mask, "But no matter what your clingy manager may tell you, 'goddesses' are not born: they're _made_. We could take any of the thousands of other tall, strong women who applied and through the magic of make-up, photography, and computers, turn them into Athena-like goddesses just like yourself. The _real_ idols, the ones who will remain in the history books long after they're gone, understand it's not who they are, but who they _know_: who they have as their... ahem... _closest_ friends. Do you understand?"

"I fully understand," Emily says with a compassionate smile, sensually posing in an alluring, almost-submissive manner. Takes all her restraint not to lose her composure to both the pressure and the laughability of her own supposed attractiveness. She only hopes the extensive prosthetic beauty enhancement is holding up under such close scrutiny. This would be a bad time for the seams to start showing...

"Allow me to give us some... privacy," the figure says, slipping a small, single button remote from the sleeve of the free hand and pressing it. With a combined beep, the four security cameras at the corners of the room all turn towards the wall and appear to turn off; just as planned. With hand still on chin, the helmet suddenly starts sliding its scales from the back forward. Six locks of perfectly combed, straight auburn hair roll down, stopping at collar-bone level with four behind and two in front. Well, that's kind of an odd hair style...

With the helmet fully converted back into a flat mask, the figure brings it down to reveal not the man Emily thought she was seducing, but instead a woman in her mid-thirties. With brown eyes, puffy cheeks, and just a couple freckles under her eyes and across her soft nose, she exerts a rural kind of girl-next-door sensibility; the kind of attractiveness one would find in the perfect mother and not an oppressive military leader. She tosses the mask aside on the desk and rises out of her chair, her 5'10", slender, and realistically soft figure appearing totally natural in every way. Comes as no surprise she 'merely' has B-cup breasts so easily hidden by crossing her arms.

"Surprised?" the woman says with a soft chuckle, her voice carrying an ironic angelic softness, "Come on: the chatter called us 'The Matriarchy'. What were you expec-"

With perfect precision and unflinching resolve, Emily quick-draws her handgun and lobs a round right between the woman's eyes. Easy. Shockingly, not only does she not so much as even flinch, but the bullet stops completely dead in its tracks upon making contact with her skin. After half a second of hanging in mid-air, gravity slides it off her nose and towards the ground. Not only did something completely negate the speed of the bullet, it also prevented its devastating plasma charge from detonating. What in the...

"Tsk, tsk," the woman cynically chides with a sinister smile, waving her index finger from side to side. Without much of anything else to do, Emily fires several more rounds in rapid succession. Proving to not be a freak occurrence or single dud, all the bullets harmlessly halt upon contact with the skin and slide off like water from a duck's back. This time, she casually catches the nullified rounds with a single cupped hand, clinking them together as she walks towards Emily.

"You can put the gun away now," the woman advises, making a downwards motion with index and middle finger while dropping the bullets on the carpet, "You can obviously see it won't work."

"What the..." Emily mutters, lowering the gun but refraining from putting it back, "...why don't any of the troopers have that technology?"

"You need a Prime Heartless core to power it," the woman casually explains, "Only forty two of those in the universe total and a whole bunch have gone missing lately. Really weakens the Heartless, but that's for the best, isn't it?"

"I suppose..." Emily sighs, unable to think of anything else to say. Why does blue and white even know about this, anyway? Uina sounded so confident that he was the only person in the universe to have figured this out...

"But I'm getting ahead of myself," the woman chuckles, stopping a pace from Emily and extending her hand, "You may call me Julia; three syllables, Latin for 'youthful', has a nice ring to it. Not my real name, of course, but I gave up any pretense of identity when I joined my fine organization."

"Pleased to make your acquaintance..." Emily mutters, reluctantly shaking Julia's hand. She certainly uses quite a lot of hand lotion...

"See?" Julia says with a warm smile, gently letting Emily's hand slip loose, "We _can_ be best of friends or perhaps even lovers, _Emily Tennenbaum_."

"...what?" Emily says, confused, "But-"

"Oh, we have methods of getting _all_ your information," Julia interrupts, chuckling softly, "Born July 22nd, 1993 at Paul Oliver Memorial Hospital, Traverse City, Michigan, United States, Mundane Eurasian Earth. Moved halfway across the country to Hometown at the age of one due to your father David Tennenbaum's career transferring him to the region. Diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at the age of twenty months, debatably Asperger syndrome, although I doubt many could call you 'high functioning' with a straight face. You were just one wrong person away from being another statistic in the long line of sexually abused autistic women."

"Either way," Julia continues with a shrug to an as yet inexpressive Emily, "You didn't speak your first word until a little after your fifth birthday party. Your parents hired speech and behavior therapists galore and tried to get you into prestigious private schools with high Ivy League placement success, but they all either rejected you or demanded tuition way beyond the payscale of either your father or your mother, Angela Camael, former singer of little-known, unsigned shoegaze band Heart of Silence, formed 1989, disbanded 1991 upon her marriage. I could play their rejected demo tape for you if you want; I don't think even mommy has a copy."

"So to public school you were banished," Julia continues after a short pause to Emily's slackjaw face, slowly circling around her, "You went through mediocre special education programs, earning mediocre grades even by their lowered standards and getting constantly picked on and ostracized by the other children until you formed a close friendship with fellow aspie _Jamie Lerquin_ in 2002. She's in this universe, by the way, but you probably already knew that. Anyway, fast forward to 2008 and you're starting out your junior year at Hometown High School. You still got relentlessly bullied by your classmates and especially the senator's daughter _Dana Billett_, who, ironically enough, is _also_ on the spectrum but has been left uninformed, untreated, neglected, and accumulated many, _many_ other behavior problems as a result. She's also in this universe and is your dire enemy: you may not even know you've met her."

"Anyway," Julia starts wrapping up, "After _Michael Selacia_, also known as _Grandmaster Uina_, had a little fun at your expense on September 19th, you vanished, your community got embroiled in a domino effect of controversy, Mike, Jamie, and Dana vanished just as the FBI was about to get involved, and all of you ended up in this universe at different time periods. Mike came in 37 years ago, Dana came in 330 days ago, Jamie came in a staggering 36,196 years ago, and you came in a little under 277 days ago. You got unwittingly drafted into Mickey's army, had some adventures with your idols, had your share of victories and defeats, witnessed so much corruption and destruction, and now, here we are."

"But... how..." Emily whimpers, tears welling up in her eyes at all the bad memories flooding back.

"It's the price you pay for your identity, love," Julia whispers into Emily's ear, giving her a shoulder rub, "No matter how secure you think your secrets may be, there is always a way to crack them. We did not become the superpower we are without the best detectives, the best hackers, and the best psycho-analysts this universe will ever know working to undermine our enemies. Isn't it ironic how your perceived enemy knows so much more about you than even your closest 'friends'? Do you even know your enemy?"

"...you're my enemy," Emily mutters darkly, walking away from Julia's rub and turning to face with hatred in her eyes, "You and everyone else in your organization. Every last one of you, from your leader Malefi-"

"Stop," Julia says, pushing two fingers against Emily's lips, "We may have once used Maleficent as a cheap way to establish our power, but we've long since dis-communicated her now that we have our military infrastructure set up. Glory hounds like her seeking to be the vaunted ruler of all she surveys are blatantly against our nameless credo; after all, none of us are as powerful as all of us and while single people and easily-identified organizations can be torn down, you can do _nothing_ against an ideal shared by the faceless masses."

"...no," Emily responds, "I _know_ people like you. You think you can bully me with your detective work? I don't care _how_ you got all that information: you cannot stop me with my past alone. I won't let your words drag me down for I have faith in Riku, Sora, Kairi, Axel, and King Mick-"

"The king is dead!" Julia interrupts with a smirk, "I should know: I helped bury him. Don't you worry: we gave him a funeral fit for a demagogue warrior king."

"And you think we can't get your information as well?" Emily continues, unfazed and unwilling to accept that statement, "We already did. We know everything about your organization and we already have plans to destroy you from the inside out."

"Are you that dense?" Julia asks in total seriousness, "Do you really think us as dense as you? Do you honestly believe we, an organization that values faceless anonymity, would ever centralize upon a single keystone leader and planet? Do you think we're so dumb as to use such an easily hacked network and place so many too-good-to-be-true clues all over? Do you really think you just waltzed right onto this planet and into my office armed with a custom-modified gun loaded with ammo illegal even by old UCoP standards? Do you think us all to be blithering idiots?"

"I know you are because I just did," Emily counters with a small wave of her gun, not entirely sure in herself but needing to maintain the image of such. She's treading on tenuous ground right now and needs to figure out a way to get past this force field while her captor still humors her. What to do, what to do...

"...you don't understand," Julia continues, shaking her head in disappointment, "So typical of your literalistic autistic mind to fail at grasping something so nebulous. Everything you think you know about us is _fake_: we set up that _fake_ network specifically to be discovered and populated it with _millions_ of bots to give the _illusion_ of activity. We set it up with all the right information so _you_ would end up right here in this office confronting _me_. You think us stupid? We even fooled genius ex-Xemnas Corp. super-scientist Lea."

Emily tries to think of some witty retort, but one minor detail she missed earlier comes back to mind: Julia asking right off the bat about 'The Matriarchy'. So this really has been premeditated ever since that ship arrived at Twilight Town? But...

"Let me explain to you _how_ our organization works," Julia continues, walking past Emily towards her desk, "We are a _decentralized_ organization: we operate through an endlessly scalable set of chapters that all act autonomously towards our stated, agreed-upon goals. Anyone with a strong enough belief in our ideals and a willingness to submit themselves to one of our dozens of comprehensive training camps for conditioning can be instated as the chapter leader within whatever power void they intend to fill. Not like it's an easy position to get since being a chapter leader not only requires incredible leadership skills and unshakable faith in our foundations, but a willingness to sacrifice all worldly possessions right down to their very fleshy vessels and be reborn anew in a perfect body just like mine... in fact, exactly like mine, sex and all."

"Hence, 'The Matriarchy'..." Emily mutters, something crossing her mind, "...did you used to be a boy or a girl?"

"Does it really matter?" Julia chuckles, checking a PDA for... something, "Who I was is irrelevant to who I am now; that's the credo of us all. Of course, you may be thinking 'but isn't a chapter leader a centralized entity?' Glad you asked. We are an organization of _multi-specialists_: everyone learns as many roles as they can keep sharp and can switch between them on the fly. Chapter leader is merely one such role that might _initially_ be just a single person while the group is first setting up, but once fully populated and adjusted to working in tandem, not only can multiple people step up to the role on the fly, but the role itself largely loses its meaning and gradually shifts over to ad-hoc messengers. Not like any former chapter leader is complaining: a perfect body granted only to the very best is gift enough even if their armor hides it."

"In fact," Julia continues, "We are _immune_ to internal power struggles. Besides the lack of name recognition and hostility to glory hounding, we do not even maintain a rank system. While we divide our general assembly into the headings of Soldier, Commander, and Bureaucrat, we do not grant better pay or benefits just for joining one section over another and we allow perfect sideways mobility should they desire to change. Everybody earns what their skill and merit warrants and an experienced front line trooper will earn more than a newly instated planetary leader like myself. While we do offer incentive in the form of a perfect new body to chapter leaders, it is not the only way: those who prove themselves to be great assets will be given the option to be reborn. Our demand of a new body to chapter leaders is out of necessity due to the special stresses of the job and also as a mark of fealty; after all, what is the biggest sign of selfless dedication than throwing away your old body?"

"...don't you have to identify people in order for this to work?" Emily asks, realizing a flaw in this design, "How can you track merit if everybody is faceless?"

"So you're not a complete dullard," Julia quips, "There is identity in the form of our computer catalog that tracks everybody by their unique helmet. The databases of members are only accessible by a select few and only through a need-to-know system; they are neither public nor casual and reduce everybody to HEX codes. We do allow people to take on fake names at their convenience on the understanding that they must change them to something unique to the squad every week and outside of the special case of a newly initiated chapter leader, we shuffle personnel around on a three month basis. No group is ever tied down to any identity and neither is any person."

"Besides," Julia wraps up, "There's another important mantra we have: you are not what you have already done, but what you _can_ do _proven_ by what you already have done. We do not believe in endless recursive respect that allows poisonous employees to keep working their same, ineffective roles just because they were once geniuses."

"...I don't believe it," Emily mutters, completely overwhelmed by this... perfection. If everything she says is true, it truly might be impossible to destroy them with anything short of a larger army. It certainly throws any plan Emily's tiny group of misfits could ever hope to pull off right out the window...

"Believe it," Julia counters, "You think our organization or even my particular chapter will fall apart upon my death? Collapse without my leadership and devolve into petty power politics that will tear it apart? Ha. No: it will chug right along without a hitch and my role will naturally replace itself without even a hint of drama. Why, I'm so confident in my men, I'll even shut down my force field right now."

Julia pulls down one side of her pants just enough to not only reveal a small boxy machine embedded with a swirling back orb strapped to her right thigh, but also that she is, in fact, a woman. With a few button presses, the glowing green LEDs turn to red. Well, she might be trying to prove a point, but would Emily be worth anything not to take this opportunity? Without any hesitation, she yanks her gun right back up and lobs a round between Julia's eyes... to the exact same effect as before. After a few awkward seconds, the brown-haired woman chuckles while shaking her head with eyes closed and expression disappointed.

"...okay, I lied," Julia admits, restoring the device to its original soft green glow and slipping her pants back up, "But that only reflects on your character, not mine. Shooting a defenseless, artificially 35-year-old woman in cold blood? Naughty, naughty. Sorry, but I'm going to have to take your toy away now."

Too stunned to move, Emily maintains her futile pose as Julia walks right up and casually snatches the gun out of her hand. She then walks back towards the desk, casually unloading the chamber and magazine at first before disassembling the weapon with her bare hands. Piece by piece, she lays the parts on the desk with a very organized layout. Upon finishing with the removal of the hand-friendly plates on the grip, she turns back to face Emily.

"Clearly, you still don't know who your enemy is," Julia sighs.

"You are my enemy," Emily insists, finally bringing her arm back down, "You kill people by the billions and destroy whole worlds to bully them into submitting to you. You force martial law on all the planets you conquer and treat everybody not in your organization like cattle. You guys are friggin' Nazis about the Yeo and want to kill every last one of them. There's nothing redeemable about any of you."

"I think you misunderstand our views on the Yeo," Julia sighs, "Typical. We have nothing against the Yeo; in fact, while we do ship them off the human worlds for their own protection _against_ racism, we extend personal invitations to all of them to join us. 3% of our standing forces are Yeo, but with our full body suits and anonymous culture, you would never tell the difference. No: we are against the _Daeh Yeo Mar Empire_. We are against their caste system, their senseless violence, and their endless corruption. They embrace a barbaric mindset and maintain a slave-based society. We want nothing more than to destroy that system."

"And you honestly believe us to be Orwellian oppressors?" Julia continues, cutting off Emily from saying anything, "You no doubt saw the protest group, didn't you? Did you know that it's because of us that they're even allowed to do that? The old government had a zero tolerance policy towards any dissent either public or private and would arrest and imprison people off-planet for years without a trial. We gave them back their freedom to speak out and now, all the pent up rage at both the old and new regimes has rendered that front door all but inaccessible. We refuse to break them up because after all, governments are made to serve the _people_."

"You still indiscriminately kill innocent people," Emily reasserts, starting to get a headache from all this political stuff.

"A necessary evil," Julia sighs, "One which we vow never to repeat again now that we have a strong foothold upon the universe. If it helps, most of the senseless slaughter was Maleficent's doing way beyond anything we authorized and once we discover a way to destroy her for good, you can rest assure that we won't delay a second in performing the task that even your dear friends could never pull off."

"Anyone who would justify killing innocent people is my enemy," Emily asserts.

"And that's why you're just an overtrained thug," Julia dismisses, turning towards the wall of bookshelves, "Here, let me make this more personal."

With a press of the single button remote, Julia sends one of the bookshelves sliding back and behind the other. On this newly exposed wall is a plethora of flat-screen computer monitors, all set on static wallpapers displaying the signature blue and white flag. With more presses of that single button, they change to various duplicated security cameras. One shows Kairi lying in bed with an intensive care machine hooked up to her while another shows Riku and Chou traveling through the cramped city underbelly with huge bags in hand. The last shows Axel in what appears to be a service elevator, tapping his foot impatiently while it travels upwards.

"Axel, Axel, Axel..." Julia sarcastically sighs in a condescending tone, a press of the remote shutting off and locking down his elevator to his surprise, "You really think we'd be stupid enough to use WiFi on our security cameras? I will kill your mother."

"What do you want from me?" Emily asks, just a little surprised that even the thoroughly analyzed space ship still has security vulnerabilities. That's a sign of their total control over the situation if nothing else.

"What makes you think I want anything?" Julia asks with a knowing smirk.

"You know I'm just a thug and you obviously don't need me to get at my friends," Emily answers, grasping at straws to try to salvage this operation, "You wouldn't be keeping me alive and showing me this if you didn't want something from me, so what is it?"

"That's the kind of systemic perceptiveness only an atypical, autistic brain could muster," Julia chuckles, walking towards Emily with a demure look on her face, "Isn't it obvious what I want? I want _you_, my beautiful thief. There might have once been a time when I accepted just any femme to come my way, but since I've been instated here, it has become much too _easy_. There's no _thrill_ in scoping out dates when my social status affords me any kind of woman I want, whenever I want, for as little an effort as sending out a few scouts. I was starting to get bored when I found out our honeypot was bringing a destined one like _you_ in, so I leaped at the chance to be your target and now, here you are."

"So you just want to have sex with me?" Emily asks, finding a confrontational angle to use, "You did all this just to get laid with some loser virgin girl?"

With those words, Julia stares blankly for a few seconds before laughing hysterically. Emily watches blankly as her captor struggles to regain her composure, sometimes getting herself under control only to break into laughter again. Really freaks her out...

"You've been in this universe..." Julia chokes out through her laughs, "...for nearly forty weeks... and you... still... don't... _know_? Oh, my..."

"What do you want from me?" Emily asks, holding back her tears at the feeling of futility taking hold in her mind. What could possibly be worse than somebody so powerful throwing the burden of her friends' fates upon her without any clue what is desired? It's like torture with no questions asked...

"...I'm okay, I'm okay," Julia says, finally regaining control, "I suppose if you don't know, there's a reason and it would be uncalled for me to spell it out. Instead, I want you to think about what you just said: 'loser virgin girl'. Why did you specify that?"

"...because you're trying to seduce somebody that wouldn't be any good in bed?" Emily shrugs, confused. Wasn't that much obvious?

"No," Julia says with a sinister smile, stroking Emily's neck with a single finger as she walks around, "You're a virgin because fate needs you to remain a virgin, but since it clearly cannot tell you why, it instead made your purity inevitable. Ever think about why you're so obsessed with a mildly-asexual boy that does not think very highly of you? Ever think of why even before entering this universe, you've always rejected the advances of perfectly good boys while dreaming of those who will never touch you? Why you're willing to experiment in virtual reality as a boy, detaching you from your real identity, but balk at the same guilt-free hanky-panky as a girl? Hasn't any of this felt kind of strange?"

"What's your point?" Emily asks, flinching at this bad touch.

"Sex means nothing to me," Julia continues, poking Emily's head away from the side, "But to to claim and convert a unique jewel like yourself as my own and tamper with the threads of fate in the process? Now _that's_ an accomplishment worthy of me... nay, the universe-controlling power of my organization!"

So with lecherous intent established, Julia rubs Emily's shoulder with one hand and playfully flicks at her hair with the other. Way too close for comfort, to be certain, yet not too forward. With this woman invading her personal space, Emily realizes a painfully obvious solution she should have done a long time ago. With a sudden twitch, she slightly turns to face her would-be molester and throws a punch right at Julia's jaw... and yet, nothing happens. This force field can apparently negate even something so mundane? Unfazed, Julia gently grabs Emily's fist and brings it down to her side in a slow, deliberate movement.

"I could corrupt you," Julia sings in a whisper-soft voice, "It will be easy. Watching you suffer... girl, it will please me. I wanna touch you with my little finger. I know it will crush you... my memory will linger!"

Taking a position straight in front of Emily, Julia grabs her other hand and pulls her in by both arms to forehead-to-forehead contact. With the slight height difference bringing her eyes in a superior position, her piercing gaze sends shivers down Emily's spines. Try as she might to break free from the soft lilac breath, Emily finds herself completely unable to so much as even move either her arms or her head; as if this force field inhibits all movement. With Julia closing the gap between their lips at an agonizingly slow pace, Emily feels both panic and blood swarming through her. This shrill noise from within overcomes her ears, her eyes blurring from all the tension. Everything about this whole situation is wrong on so many levels and she can do absolutely nothing to stop it.

Emily blanks out for the quickest of seconds, regaining her consciousness upon realizing one of her arms has been released. Things hang worryingly still and quiet for a few seconds as her sight returns, her vision still overtaken by Julia's head but with something else behind her. Something a contrasting black and white, shimmering in the sudden brightness pouring in from the window... or what remains of it, at least. It finally clears up enough to reveal none other than the so-called 'Anna Molly', triumphantly striking forth with magnificent wings spread but held aloft by Julia's steel grip under her jaw in this defused act of defiance. With target secure, Julia turns to face her new prey with a truly sinister smile.

"I thought you'd never come," Julia says, releasing Emily's hand and punching her with surprising power into a twisting beeline right onto the couch. Without missing a beat, Julia twists around with Anna in tow and throws her over her shoulder right into the nearby bookshelf. She falls into a crouching position along with all the old hardcover volumes, but without any regard for the downpour of books, she stands up through them and shrugs them off with a flap of her wings. Back on her feet and standing proud, she summons forth her red spear and twirls it into the ground.

"Hey, there..." the dark angel greets, her striking outfit and streaked hair billowing in the violent wind, "...Kiko?"

"You may as well drop the pretense of pseudonyms," Julia cuts in, walking towards her desk with one eye on the intruder, "I already namedropped her, _Jamie_."

"So you've figured us out," the girl called either Anna or Jamie responds, "You certainly live up to everything I've seen and heard of your organization. It's a shame you're doomed to failure like every other would-be ruler of this forsaken universe."

"You think us doomed?" Julia asks in disbelief, reaching underneath and pulling out a pair of glowing blue and white nightsticks, "Ha. You, too, fail to grasp the magnitude of our philosophy. Let me explain: according to the history of your old universe, Hindus from India didn't traditionally have a word for religion for most of its history. To them, everyone and everything was dharma. It was not until they came in contact with the west and their myriad religions that they had to acknowledge different faiths. Unlike them, we choose not to. That's why we don't have a permanent name to identify ourselves from the others: in due time, the others won't even exist and no words will be necessary to distinguish us!"

"...cool story, sis," Anna or Jamie sighs with a shake of her head, turning to face Emily, "Can you believe these people are totally serious, Emily? They think they have something on us."

"I guess Maleficent deserves more respect than her pitiful resume should warrant," Julia says, assuming a battle stance and looking over her opponent with great scrutiny, "Six hotly contested prisms to free you, six perfect Heartless Primes to restore your luster, and even the keyblade of one of the legendary heroes of the universe. It's a shame her track record won't improve one iota because you're going _down_ and there's absolutely _nothing_ you can do about it!"

"I've destroyed better than you," the person that probably isn't Jamie responds, pointing her red spear defiantly, "_Way_ better than you. You're just as faceless and undistinguished as your organization could ever wish: absolutely bloody nobody."

"I still have my heart, thank you very much," Julia counters, tapping her chest with one nightstick and pointing at Anna with the other, "Something I doubt you can claim with your Heartless affinity."

"The Heartless would never dare to touch me," Anna moodily states, "They like me too much... look, are we going to fight or what?"

As if waiting for just that very statement, half a dozen tech troopers burst through the door with assault rifles at the ready. Anna watches from the side of her eyes as these armored men surround her on either side of their commander, kneel-crouching with weapons butted into their shoulders. The kind of position that would only be taken by people using the absolute highest settings on their guns and completely confident the couple meter gap will not be closed. Julia chuckles at the wariness of her opponent, slightly crouching into a battle stance and swinging the two L-shaped batons to line up with her forearms.

"Your move, 'empress'," Julia offers, smacking the nightsticks together in a tiny burst of sparks. Without bothering on a tired old comment about a 'fair fight', Anna ignores the taunting woman in favor of a trooper at the far end near the window. All at once, the armored men unleash a barrage of sonic bolts at their target with grim certainty, but try as they might, they just can't get through. Anna acrobatically swerves and dodges some, deflects others towards the ceiling with her gleaming red spear, and absorbs the rest right in the palm of her free hand with nary an ill effect. Graceful, poised, and breezing like the wind.

The gap closed and his weapon no longer firing for some reason, Anna's target dodges her one-handed feint but fails to evade the follow-up. Without so much as even a flinch, she drives the spear right through the man's chest in a spray of blood and sparks out the other end. She doesn't delay even a second in grabbing the pole with her other hand and swinging the nearly-dead body around, blocking each bolt with her mostly human shield. With the obstacle out of her way, she blips her spear out of existence for less than a second and resummons it in a single hand in preparation for the next one.

Sadly, her new opponent proves a tad more wily even with his weapon disabled. With way too much agility for somebody donned in so much metal, he dodges each trust without even reacting to the feints. As Anna steps too far into one such narrow-miss, the man yanks her arm, swerves around as she staggers forward, and shoves her towards the broken window. As if realizing both the implicit order to keep her alive and the futility of throwing a bird-like person to a plummeting death, he prevents her fall by grabbing a wing with both hands: his one big, final mistake. Showing way too much strength for her small frame, Anna lifts him up by bending forward, twists on her heels, and flings him off her back and out the window with a mighty flap. Well, he'll now get to see if his suit is rated for terminal velocity against concrete...

"Don't try and grapple her, you idiots!" Julia yells at her momentarily awestruck men, apparently content to let them do all the work, "_Use your friggin' weapons!_"

The next man in Anna's sights never really stood a chance, failing to duck under a sweep that launches him out the window. More sonic bolts prove completely useless in stopping her rampage, but this half of the team proves just a bit more coordinated than the last. Julia finally enters the fray from the side, timing her path to evade the shots and readying her twin batons. Seems almost careless of her to rush towards Anna like this and with maybe a centimeter of leeway, the thrusted spear finds its way through the former's armpit.

But something extraordinary, something mythical, something completely unexpected happens even beyond the friendly fire dissipating harmlessly without so much as mussing Julia's outfit. With a simple twist of her torso, she snaps the keyblade turned spear clean in half. Anna certainly reacts fast by bringing what's left of her weapon to parry the overhead slam, but it also proves much too fragile and cleanly snaps right at the contact point. The incoming baton doesn't slow down even the slightest in its crushing blow, Anna's knees buckling out from under her as the weapon slams into her shoulder.

Before her prey can smack butt-first into the ground, Julia slams Anna upside the head with her other baton and launches her right into the ceiling. With only the softest grunts upon each impact, Anna proves quite hard to stagger and evades Julia's attempted double-baton turnstyle 360 by extending her wings and gliding upside-down to the other end of the room. The blue and white forces just watch as she does a mid-air somersault and lands crouched with one hand to the ground, a look of determined disbelief on her face. She quickly reaches a hand out and blips her spear back, good as new but not quite as imposing now that it has been proven fallible.

"Why did you all stop shooting again?" Julia asks of her once-again awestruck men, loudly snapping her batons together with the usual sparks, "_Never_ stop shooting."

"No can do, boss: our weapons don't work on her," one of the troopers states, his voice wary. Something about the way he says it doesn't sound quite natural: as though the fear is something being afflicted from without rather than an obvious conclusion from within. Perhaps those with weak wills cannot help but cower before the 'ancient destroyer'?

"Friggin'... way too smart to be a soldier..." Julia mutters, unconcerned about being overheard, "Get back to work."

As the troopers continue firing their useless barrage and Julia rushes a now disillusioned Anna, Emily finally decides to take a side. Silently rolling off the couch, she looks to the ground for something, anything she can use as a weapon. Sadly, there's nothing but broken glass all around... well, it will have to do. She picks up a fairly narrow piece, a jagged splinter making her drop it back onto the carpet. Okay, so sharp glass and unprotected hands don't mix. Still not worthy of anyone's attention, she walks a few steps and pulls a handkerchief from her wayward purse. With her covered hand now holding the makeshift dagger, she's ready to help bring down the real bad guys... hopefully.

Sadly, it turns out Emily's involvement may be necessary after all. While the troopers have once again gone passive and awestruck, Julia definitely has the upper hand against Anna. While the latter does her best to evade and keeps resummoning her constantly broken spear, constant jabs with the sparkly ends have left a few visible points of charred skin and punctured wings. Probably nothing she can't fix with her magic, but still...

Circling around to an ideal angle, Emily takes a couple step dash and grapples the furthest trooper right out of his trance. With one arm pinning his assault rifle against his chest, she starts jabbing under the cloth... to no effect. The glass chips away as it hits something hard, something oddly impenetrable despite her experience back in Twilight Town... although expecting even skyscraper quality glass to compare to explosive-tipped bullets may be stretching it a little far.

The trooper spares no quarter as he takes a page from Anna's playbook, lifting Emily off her feet with a forward bow and elbowing her a few meters up in the air. He follows this up by twisting around and swinging his assault rifle into Emily's midsection, launching her straight into the expensive stereo system. Completely winded by a blow powerful enough to leave her imprint on the fancy machine, all she can do is watch as her target slowly approaches with assault rifle at the ready. Well, time to die...

"...boss?" the trooper instead says, turning to face Julia. While she had a pretty good combo of bludgeons against Anna, this distraction allows the battered and bloody dark angel enough respite to break free. Her groove broken, Julia half-turns to get both within her furious eyes.

"What?" Julia asks, annoyed.

"Should I kil-" the trooper attempts.

"Go right ahead," Julia curtly cuts off, turning back to the more pressing issue of the 'ancient destroyer'. Emily winces as the trooper turns back and starts to lift his rifle, but fortunately, his prior hesitation proves to be his downfall. Anna throws her spear like a javelin right through the soldier's back, the sudden impalement knocking his aim just off-course enough to send the plasma bolt centimeters from Emily's hand. She then kicks a dead trooper's assault rifle high in the air and performs a wing-assisted leap over Julia's mad rush, grabbing the weapon in mid-air and squeezing the handle really, really hard. A shower of blue sparks surge out of the grip, accompanied by a loud whine that goes away just as fast as it came.

"It's dangerous to fight them alone," Anna chides, throwing the assault rifle over the stunned heads of the troopers into Emily's lap, "Here, take this."

As if realizing there's now another player on the field, the two troopers start turning to face Emily. Without any time to figure out if it's safe, she quickly snatches up the weapon and aims at the one closest to her. Surprisingly enough, whatever Anna just did to it must have disarmed its security and it obeys her without blowing up in her arms. The lobbed plasma bolt obliterates the trooper's neck, popping his still-helmeted head off before he could even see what was coming. Well, one down, two to go...

Emily rolls out of her groove and back onto her feet, evading the potshots of this trooper as he ducks behind the desk. Of course, there is one flaw in that plan which Emily picks right up: it's only wood. With unflinching resolve, she unloads several shots right through the desk in a spray of splinters and metallic sparks. A satisfying thump of so much forged poly-alloy-whatever confirms her kill, leaving only the big boss herself left to take down.

Probably a good thing because now, Julia has a bloodied to a pulp Anna backed against the shattered wall of computer monitors and is preventing her escape with brutal blow after blow. Oddly enough, she notices the topmost monitor still showing Axel through its cracks, down on his knees and coughing amidst all the pink smoke filling his chamber. For being a mere service elevator, it sure is resilient to his magically-imbued chakrams. Well, better hurry up, then.

Emily starts firing as fast as her weapon will allow, each shot dissipating harmlessly into Julia's back. A completely futile gesture, to be certain, but one that isn't going unnoticed. Julia slows down her relentless beating with each shot, ending with a brutal double-smash against Anna's tattered winged back that finally lays her face-first against the ground. Now content in having soaked the dark angel's torn dress in blood, charred large portions of her pale skin black, and torn away part of her once-majestic wings, Julia turns to face Emily without so much as even flinching at the plasma bolts absorbing into her eyes.

"God damn complacent, greenhorn city guards," Julia mutters, swinging the nightsticks forward as she starts an intimidating slow walk, "I ask for vets, they send me newbs. 'Amaterasu is A plus secure, you don't need pros. Here, train these fresh graduates for us'. Typical. Have to do everything by myself..."

Realizing that a person able to devastate the 'ancient destroyer' is just a bit over her skill level, Emily attempts to run towards the door. With surprising cat-like agility, Julia thrusts with her nightstick and tazes Emily with a debilitating amount of voltage. Stunned and staggered, she doesn't react as Julia drops her left nightstick and smacks the assault rifle out of her hands with the other. Before Emily can uselessly fall backwards, Julia uses her newly freed hand to grab her by the throat and lift her half a meter into the air.

"Jamie Lerquin," Julia proudly speaks, turning around to show Emily to the literally-fallen angel, "The ancient contract states that those who best you in combat and offer a bargaining chip can claim your loyalty away from another. I think your sad state proves the former and my ability to snap your dear lover's neck with but a whim should be more than enough to count as the latter. Renounce Maleficent's claim and acknowledge me as your new mistress!"

"Ha!" Anna defiantly says with a knowing smile, spitting out a large glob of blood in disrespect, "I am not enthralled to Maleficent: I am enthralled to that rapist that did all the real work. Until she stakes her claim on my loyalty, it cannot be taken away by another. I just let Maleficent think she owns me so that won't happen."

"...bull," Julia mutters after a few seconds processing that statement, "Friggin' bullsh... no. You're lying."

Anna rises up to her knees with a soft flutter of her wings and digs her hands into her dress and leotard collars, finishing the tears on the front to expose her, indeed, flat chest. While there is a seemingly-tattooed ornamental circle between her underdeveloped breasts, there's nothing inside. While Emily is clueless about what it means, Julia recognizes it and starts shaking with rage. The kind of reaction of one robbed of their greatest victory... and with no link leading into it, a random thought pops into Emily's head. Why didn't she say this earlier?

"...right... thigh..." Emily chokes out through the grip, "...the machine... is on her... right... thi-"

"My dear Emily," Julia interrupts with a squeeze, bringing Emily in to another uncomfortably close face-to-face, "Do you want to die? Why, it sounds like you're asking me to kill you. Don't you think your death might make your childhood friend so very, very sad? Probably not as sad as robbing you of your purity right in front of her."

As if renewed of her stamina with that indirect threat, Anna focuses her determined eyes on Julia's right thigh and thrusts a hand out. Some wave of visible distortion appearing as a mirage bends the air between them, Anna's amethyst eyes swirling with energy. As if also renewed of her stamina, Emily feels control of her limbs returning all at once. Even in spite of what she knows, she still tries kicking at her oppressor... and surprisingly enough, it works. Stunned by the sudden vulnerability, Julia staggers backwards and releases Emily onto her back. She doesn't react as her victim scrabbles away, coughing and hacking not slowing her down in the slightest.

Wordlessly, Anna rises back to her feet with a proud flap of her tattered wings and resummons her gleaming red spear. Julia, confused but undeterred, kicks up her discarded nightstick into her free hand and readies herself for the incoming 'ancient destroyer'. She tries to evade and deflect the incoming thrust of the spear away as usual, but this time, it doesn't work. Oh, no: instead, her baton stops flat in its track and the lance tears away at the shirt, leaving a bloody gash on her side just under her ribcage. An unsightly blemish on what is supposedly a 'perfect body'.

Even more confused but still just as undeterred, Julia once again squeezes the spear into her armpit and tries to taze Anna away with a hard trust of her nightstick. Unfortunately, it appears the tables have been turned because the baton's glow dissipates immediately upon its futile contact with the dark angel's exposed chest. Anna flicks the nightstick out of her target's hand and thrusts an open palm into her stomach, allowing the spear to go with her as the attack launches her straight backward with incredible force. Her short journey ends with a slam of her back into the stereo, settling into the same imprint Emily was once embedded. Anna gives a curious look with a tilted head at her opponent, blipping her spear out and back into existence in her outstretched hand.

"Wha..." Julia mutters, bashing her remaining baton backwards and knocking herself out of the groove. She throws the nightstick into her other hand and takes a significantly more evasive stance, appearing more as a fencer rather than a defiant bruiser. Anna performs a series of hurricane thrusts, narrowly missing her now highly agile target. Julia finally catches an opening and slips past her opponent, circling around and slamming into Anna's winged back with both hands on the nightstick.

Yet, even this impressive reversal does absolutely nothing. Oh, no. Frozen in place by some unknown force, Julia can only watch as Anna spins around and slashes across her stomach. Staggered backwards by this deep wound, Julia fails to fully evade an upwards slash between her breasts. Anna takes one step back away from her retreating target, crouching downwards with spear held to the side. With a mighty flap of her wings, she kicks off the ground towards her sideways-leaping target and slashes through her right thigh in a spray of both blood and sparks. As if channeling old samurai movies, she stops a few paces away with back turned to her target and weapon held to the side. Impressive...

"Urgh," Julia grunts, grabbing at her thigh as she sinks towards the ground. On her knees and convulsing as if suffering from an epileptic seizure, inky darkness starts coalescing out of the broken machine and seeping into her wounds. Emily, now recovered just enough to walk on her own, strides up to Anna's side as she turns to face the broken matriarch.

"Is that what I think it is..." Emily asks to no reply, scrutinizing the darkness-covered woman squeezing herself into a fetal position. Both Julia's convulsions and her pouring blood stop, darkness still swarming around her as she starts making some percussive noise. It takes a while before anything about this sound can be recognized.

"...heh heh heh... heh heh... heh heh..." Julia vocalizes, her back starting to shake ever so softly. As if realizing what's going on with just this motion, Anna grabs Emily by the wrist and yanks her along as she rushes towards the open window. What in the...

"Exactly," Anna finally answers, leaping out the window with wings fully extended and her unwitting cargo in tenuous tow. Almost immediately upon exit, a harsh gust of wind smacks Emily away into an upwards flip, but her 'guardian heartless angel' simply grabs her by the leg before any need for dive-bombing presents itself. Hanging upside down and blessed by remembering not to look down, she gets a full view of the skyscraper window as they fly away. Even with so much deafening wind rushing through her ears, even she can hear the full-on maniacal laughter of the matriarch known as 'Julia'.

"**MINE!**" Julia shouts in a bass-heavy banshee-howl of a voice, yanking her head up to reveal a terrifyingly twisted form. Her face appears to have dissolved to reveal a solidified inky blackness, eye sockets doubled in size and completely filled with glowing yellow orbs completely unlike any real life biology. Her nose has completely vanished to make way for both the eyes and the enlarged mouth, her teeth almost-cartoonish in their triangular, gleaming-white, razor-sharp configuration. While patches of her skin and outfit remain around parts of her body, they won't be there for long at the rate the darkness is consuming everything that was once human about her. Tendrils of solidified smoke start emerging from her pitch-black skin, finishing the sickening transformation to what is unambiguously a Heartless.

With another shrill cry that pierces the howling winds, the Heartless that was once Julia quite literally explodes from her crouching position into a midair dash towards Anna and Emily. All the debris within the devastated office comes along for the ride in her tailwind, appearing as a fine mist of glass and paper. Her form twists as she extends her arm and enlarges her clawed hand, barely missing her two targets by less than a meter. Gravity catches up with her all at once and sends her plummeting downwards, no doubt on her way to a truly impressive splatter upon hitting the cement ground at terminal velocity.

But she doesn't prove so easily deterred. After about thirty stories of freefall, she yanks herself back upright and tames gravity in one chaotic move. Suspended in mid-air and growing larger by the second, she searches around for her former targets. It's probably a good thing Anna is circling around the skyscraper, vanishing out of sight behind the tower.

"What the..." Emily attempts, the wind stealing her breath, "...what is going on?"

_Use your telepathy: I can't hear you with this wind._

"I don-" Emily attempts, another gush silencing her. For reasons unknown, Anna resummons her spear and throws it at some random point of the building. Upon contact, it explodes in only a couple meter wide radius and leaves behind a jagged hole. Upon the black and oddly pink smoke clearing, Emily finally makes out Axel on his hands and knees gasping for air in his exposed and most definitely no longer safe elevator.

_That woman calling herself 'Julia' was a strong-willed, powerful person in life with a completely pure, undiluted heart. Amoral, yes, vicious, definitely, but still pure of heart. As a result, the Heartless Prime core she stupidly used to power that machine has fused with her, found no darkness to turn into a Heartless, and thus produced a hybrid not unlike Xehanort in either form or power. We need to kill her before she starts summoning Heartless and collecting hearts or everybody on this planet is dead._

"Wha-" Emily attempts once again, this time silenced by Anna's sudden dive-bomb. It takes a second before she notices that Julia is hot in pursuit, triple the size of a human being and more than keeping pace with the dark angel. Smoky tendrils writhe and wave in the harsh air, trailing behind her at increasing lengths. Even with her face twisted into a mockery of the human form, one can still see a sense of longing in her glowing yellow eyes. It's as though she still possesses some of her old will under this hostile new exterior.

Anna takes a sudden turn towards a straight down divebomb, but she proves too slow to escape the mad slash of this terrifying new monster. Chunks of wing tear right off, spraying blood and feathers like a jet trail in her wake. She tries to pull up, but her tattered wings just can't offer the loft she needs. With no way to stop a terminal impact with the fast coming sidewalk, she spins around and takes the full brunt of the hit. A few more awkward bounces finally brings her to a rest, Emily slipping loose on the last one and harmlessly smacking face-first into the pavement.

"...not again..." Emily mutters, rising up to her feet and turning to face Anna. Looks like that gash tore off three large swathes of her wings, accounting for at least half their mass. Combined with the blood and burnt skin from that savage beating, she certainly looks like one sad sack of black and white, stained by red.

"...I'm okay," Anna answers to the unstated question, levitating upwards with a strained flutter of her torn wings and landing gracefully on the ground.

"...how?" Emily asks in disbelief as Anna bends her right shoulder forward to get a good view of her wing.

"I'm a lot hardier than poor, dead Xion, I can tell you that much," Anna states, feeling inside the gashes and moodily sighing without so much as even a wince, "And I just restored them not even a week ago, too... going to need more energy..."

It takes a little before Emily finally notices the large gathering crowd of protesters within this commercial district, apparently more fascinated by the appearance of the 'ancient destroyer' than their futile attempt to overthrow their oppressors. Even the riot police have come along to see the show, intermingling with the once-hostile crowd without too much concern for their own safety. Whatever draws them here no doubt makes them a bit more peaceful.

As if forgetting her original targets, a now six times the size of a human Julia stomp lands right in the middle of the crowd and crushes several people underneath her massive, malformed feet with sickening cracks. The once docile crowd starts fleeing in panic as she grabs people at random, quite literally squeezing the life out of them in the form of newly created Heartless springing from their limp bodies. Even many of the policemen are retreating amongst the delirious crowd, the few that stand their ground with their wimpy, futile pistols getting rewarded with quick deaths at the hands of this towering monstrosity.

"...you know we'll never finish our tasks if you keep holding back, right?" Anna asks, walking up beside Emily.

"Huh?" Emily asks, confused.

"Come on, _think_," Anna says, shaking Emily by her shoulders with that emphasis, "Haven't you ever wondered why the Heartless have never managed to kill you? Why you didn't die to the ones that held you on Discord and the last time you were here? Why no Lightside ever showed themselves in the long history of the Heartless until shortly after you arrived? That Lightside Wyvern at the unfinished bridge was no coincidence."

Emily tries to think of some response, but what can she really say to nonsense like this? At least two new groups show promise in defeating this overwhelming threat even if Anna refuses to do anything. At one far corner of an intersecting street is a reunited trio of Axel, Riku, and Chou, their weapons drawn but their faces concerned. Sure didn't take long for the Nobody to reunite with his buddies. Less reluctant is the group of fourteen armored troopers, walking alongside two miniature tanks of identical blue and white metal. Try as they might to take down the hulking behemoth with their constant barrage of firepower, every last bolt absorbs harmlessly into Julia's skin without even a spark of resistance.

"That wily wench," Anna comments, not reacting much to Julia lobbing a huge explosive bolt into the squadron, "Just like a Prime to learn to harness the machine that once enslaved it. No way any responsible person can let that get into the Heartless gene pool, but I know I definitely can't get through..."

"You know..." Emily starts in a disappointed tone, "For an 'ancient destroyer', you're not very-"

Shock silences her as Anna lifts her up by her shoulders, levitating just a little off the ground with a strained, rapid flapping of her wings not unlike a hummingbird. Obviously takes all her energy to make their reduced loft work.

"We don't have time for your self-discovery," Anna chides, hurling Emily up a meter and grabbing her by her ankles, "You're just going to have be forced into awakening. I'm sorry I have to do this, but you'll _thank me later_."

With surprising recklessness, Anna spins in place with the downwards flapping of one wing and sideways of another. Once reaching a disorienting speed not unlike a tornado, she throws Emily like a shot put right at the towering monster. Before she even gets a chance to regain her vision, Julia grabs her out of the air and brings her in for an extreme close up into her glowing yellow eyes. Well, it's official: Emily is screwed and Anna really doesn't care much about her after all...

"**MINE!**" Julia triumphantly yells out in a hideous voice, squeezing Emily as if she were a lemon. As her bones crack and her organs slosh, some kind of electrical energy surges through her and painfully spasms her neck to crane backwards. Blood rushes to her head through both squish and spasm, her neck burning and ears popping from so much pressure. Those boxy yellow flickers overwhelm her eyes, her focus completely destroyed and double vision swirling all around. Her pain suddenly gives way to total cold numbness, her body going limp and head bouncing back downward. So her surprisingly long streak finally comes to an end...

...and yet, no Heartless is coming out of her. While her blurry eyes can hardly be relied upon, it almost seems as though light is spreading and consuming Julia from the wrist inwards; as if something is infecting her veins. The last thing Emily hears before it all becomes too much is the truly pained scream of the twisted Heartless hybrid.


	81. Power Pellet

Once again back into the dream time. That mythical, abstract place where the brain throws together everything weighing on its platter into some barely comprehensible flood of images and sounds. Emily is no stranger to this constantly shifting landscape of possibilities and denials, which may or may not be orchestrated by the whims of that girl in black.

In this particular dreamscape, it seems she has been sent back to one of her painful early memories. Inhabiting a weak six year old body, she can only watch through her own eyes as she draws shapes into the dusty ground of this playground. For you see, the blaring sun overhead makes all the polished metal of the equipment hurt her eyes and her teachers have confiscated the Game Boy Color she smuggled to the school. Long since robbed of her books and drawing materials to try and make her socialize with the other kids, she instead imagines all her wondrous stories by designing her very own primitive video game chart.

Of course, this was back in the watershed era of 1999 when video games were purely a boy thing and there was nothing quite so uncool as a very little girl invading that territory. One such group of third-grade boys, so cowardly as to focus their four on one efforts against a girl two years their junior, can't help but suspend their pick-up game of basketball upon realizing there's a new angle with which to torment her. It's almost pitiful the way these smug little bastards approach her as if they're a gangster posse straight out of a rap music video; a motif finished by their jerseys, backwards caps, and plastic bling.

"Whaddup, freak?" says the lead boy in his red jersey emblazoned with the number 23.

"Nothing," Emily quickly says, dropping the stick.

"Nothing nothing," says a boy with a green jersey emblazoned with the number 4, sticking his head in Emily's face, "That's something. What is it?"

"It's nothing," Emily lies again, turning away from the sweaty little urchin, "Leave me alone."

"It's that pock-you-mon crap, isn't it?" says a third boy wearing a red jersey emblazoned with 25, snickering a little at the dirty word.

"Tell us what it is!" says the final boy, looking awkward in his blue and orange jersey emblazoned with 99. Emily tries to get up and walk away, but they close the circle around her before she gets a chance. Against her best wishes, she decides to go ahead and follow the conflict-resolution advice of her teachers. Such a stupid decision and the older Emily can't help but feel pain as she helplessly witnesses her younger self.

"It's a map," Emily explains to the boys, pointing at various parts, "I'm gonna make a game just like _Pokémon_, but like that book _Dragonsong_. This is where the hero Menolly used to live until she ran-"

"BORING!" rudely interrupts 4, sticking his head right back in Emily's face.

"That's so lame," chimes in 99 from behind, "You lame up video games with your GIRL coot-"

"Heroes can't be girls!" cuts in 25, bringing his head to block Emily's face as she tries and turn from 4. One can tell they know just how much eye contact hurts her by the way they prevent her from breaking it.

"Yeah!" confirms 23, nearly bumping Emily's head with his own, "Nobody watches girl sports!"

"What about Anna?" Emily asks, thinking about something she overheard once. A stupid attempt to talk about sports and relate on their level; something nobody should ever try if they know absolutely nothing.

"Who's Anna?" 99 asks in total seriousness.

"That tennis girl," 23 answers.

"Oh, yeah," 99 says, his face resuming its goonish shape, "Nobody cares about her!"

"Yeah!" 25 chimes in, "Where's her vidya game?"

"Yeah!" echos 4 mindlessly, "Tiger has a game. Madden has a game. Shaq has a game. Why doesn't she have a game?"

"I don't care," Emily dismisses, looking straight down into the ground, "I hate sports. Leave me alone."

"You hate sports because you can't play them, wimp!" jeers 25, crouching to jab his face upwards into Emily's.

"And you hate my games because you can't play them," Emily insults back, knowing the words but totally lacking the conviction to make them work. Of course, as the old memory goes, the boys break out into laughter at this admittedly pathetic attempt at a come back; why wouldn't boys know how to play video games? Continuing long after they've stopped finding it funny, 23 finally breaks the monotonous goonish laughter to continue his childish onslaught.

"Look what I got!" 23 declares, pulling out a blueish-purple Game Boy Color adorned with all sorts of glittery stickers. An odd clash of boyish technology with a girlish exterior. Emily gasps upon seeing her beloved handheld in the ruddy little claws of this urchin.

"My Game Boy!" Emily says, futilely grabbing out at it. 4 and 99 grab her shoulders and drag her back before she can snatch her belonging, 25 yanking her hair. That breach of her personal space is probably where they finally cross the line of easily ignorable behavior.

"Game BOY!" 25 jeers with a really goonish laugh. Despite the obviousness of this statement, older Emily remembers it took her years to understand what he meant by it. Years of playing this memory over and over in her mind, day by day, every time she ever went to school...

"I can play your games!" 23 proudly declares, flipping on the device, "Your pock-you-mon crap!"

"Please give that back," Emily whimpers as the boy mashes the buttons with about as much grace as a gorilla. It only takes him about a minute to finally get what he wants, turning it back around and shoving it into her eyes. With the blaring sun and the close proximity of the non-backlit Game Boy Color, it takes a second for her to see that the game is asking for confirmation on a save file deletion and the boy's thumb is over the A button.

"No!" Emily yells out in anguish upon the realization of what he's going to do, "I have 112 Pokémon!"

"Like I _give!_" 23 says in an obvious imitation of something he once saw on television, "Say 'boys rule, girls drool'!"

"...boys rule, girls drool," Emily says in total monotone upon regaining some composure, internalizing her teacher's advice that while they can make her say that, they can't make her believe it. They still seem at least a little satisfied in making her say this.

"Say you want to be a boy!" 99 cuts in with a mocking laugh.

"I want to be a real boy," Emily says in a sarcastic tone, not quite yet appreciating the concept but still imitating those around her. As if the unintentional Disney reference makes it that much more hilarious, they go into utter hysterics from that statement. Such simplistic senses of humor, but hey, they're only eight...

"LIAR!" 23 yells into Emily's face, mashing the A button hard enough to resonate a snap through the air. In the blink of an eye, all those hours Emily spent hunting and catching her bestiary of wild monsters vanishes into the great digital ether. So much hard work... gone in an instant. Enraged, Emily makes an attempt to break free and punch the boy, but only manages to sprain her wrist in the struggle. Such a weak little girl...

"Why?" Emily cries out through her tears, thinking about her poor, erased Charizard she had so many great many memories with.

"Because you're a GIRL that acts like a BOY!" 23 yells in response, ripping the cartridge out without turning the system off and throwing it in her face, "A TOMBOY! Tomboy, tomboy, tomboy!"

The other boys start chanting that tainted word through their goonish giggling. As if this situation couldn't get any worse, the sun manages to catch the plastic bling of the boys just right to reflect into her face. With the burning light piercing her watery eyes, she looks down to the ground and tries to pretend she's somewhere else. Somewhere in that mythical world where her very own fiery lizard would burn them all to a cinder. Sadly, this only brings the thought of her best friend being lost forever; a thought cemented further by the discarded cartridge, covered in dusty soil and stained by mud made through her own tears.

"Dude, teacher," 25 says from behind, the other boys going silent with those two words. As if going that extra little mile, the boys throw Emily face first into the ground before running like the wind. While freed from her oppressors, she's still unable to move of her own accord as she continues weeping into her filthy blue cartridge. She doesn't even bother to acknowledge the adult in her presence, barely even noticing the shadow looming over her.

"My poor dear!" says the woman in a concerned, crouching down in front of Emily, "What happened?"

"Those boys killed my best friend Menolly!" Emily cries out as she rises to her knees, picking up her muddy cartridge and holding it up to the woman. The blaring sun and blurry eyes cast all the features of this grown up in nondescript shadow... then again, if it's just replaying her memory, it could be that she never really remembered that person... in fact, she can't recall this conversation having ever been part of the memory...

"There, there," the woman comforts, refraining from touching Emily because she clearly understands her syndrome, "Menolly will always live on in your heart even if she doesn't live on as a series of electric 1s and 0s arranged in a chunk of silicon."

"They stole my Game Boy again!" Emily sobs, almost hiccuping through her wet face and quivering lip, "Mommy won't buy me more! I won't have anything to do when I get home!"

"There, there," the woman repeats with exasperation, "We'll get your Game Boy back. You don't even need to tattle on them."

"R-really?" Emily responds, her voice optimistic.

"Of course we will," the woman says, "When you get knocked down, you just get right back up again. Come back stronger than a powered-up Pac-Man. Those boys won't grow up to be anything but criminals and fry chefs, anyway."

"Thank you!" Emily says, overjoyed that a teacher is willing to do anything for her... then again, older Emily is able to recognize this teacher is just a little disillusioned with her job. 'Powered-up Pac-Man'?

"In the mean time," the woman says, pulling out a notebook and pencil from a purse, "Why don't you write about your adventures with Menolly? Tell us all your wondrous stories."

"I will!" Emily enthusiastically promises, taking the writing implements with a surprising glee. Did she really forget about the deletion of her digital friend so quickly or is she deluding herself?

"Some day," the woman wraps up, "You'll get to have a real adventure, discover your real power, and be a lot more than a little girl playing silly video games. You'll see."

* * *

**.**

* * *

With that bittersweet memory hanging on her mind, Emily stirs in her fading sleep. It sure has been a long time since she has visited that memory, having long replaced it with many worse memories and moving on from Nintendo to Square. It is kind of sad how she has never really included that reassuring bit from the teacher, but she always has been a pretty negative person all her life. At least now she knows where the idea for writing fanfiction originally came from...

With her balance and coordination returning, she notices something kind of odd: she's upright and vertical. Not lying down or even seated up, but just kind of... hanging there. Literally. Sure doesn't feel like anything is holding her, so maybe that so-called hybrid Heartless really did a number on her nervous system? It's not until she tries and moves that she finds herself restrained by some kind of cushioned full-body suit that, while allowing at least a little slack, prevents her limbs from moving much more than half a meter in any direction. As reluctant as she usually is after any dreamy sleep, she's just going to have to open her eyes and-

She immediately regrets that decision as the brightest light imaginable overwhelms her vision. She tries closing her eyelids, but they prove futile in filtering the blinding radiance; as if she cannot unsee it now that she has seen it. She forces her head down, but that suit doesn't even want to allow her that luxury and her neck muscles only last a little over a minute before her head is brought back up into the light. Unable to see or move, she tries to say something but only manages to gurgle out some nonsense as even her very mouth refuses to obey.

"I think she's awake now," whispers a nondescript voice from beyond the blinding light, still audible to her somehow. Funny how she frequently doesn't process people talking directly to her, but she can make out even such a quiet whisper.

"Welcome back..." calls out an ominous, vaguely-recognizable male voice, "...Miss Tennenbaum."

"...so I lost, huh?" Emily finally manages to mutter, regret filling inside her, "Look: I don't know anything and I agreed to a 'deny all knowledge' contract, so you may as well just kill me and sav-"

"We're not the Matriarchy," cuts in that voice once again, "Although from what I heard, it was an uphill battle getting you away from them."

"...Uina?" Emily asks, the voice finally clicking in her head.

"Bingo," Uina dryly responds.

"What is going on? Where am I?" Emily asks, her eyes starting to water from all this unavoidable light.

"You're in a secure location," Uina answers, "About a hundred lightyears away from Amaterasu and growing."

"They still have cameras on board," Emily helpfully points out, "I do-"

"We dumped the stolen Matriarchy ship," Uina interrupts, "Axel was really careless about everything back there."

"Hey, man, I said I-" another voice from beyond the radiant veil attempts.

"Don't identify yourself," Uina cuts off with a loud clap of his hands, "Idiot."

"What the hell is going on?" Emily insists, frustrated, "Why am I bound like this? What's with the light?"

"The Matriarchy leaked all of our information to the whole universe..." Uina continue, pausing a second, "Well, not my information. They don't know I'm part of the rebellion just yet. Still, they dropped documents on Sora, Riku, Chou, Axel, Mint, Maleficent... and what they posted about _you_ is quite the doozy. All the methods they gave for verifying the information worked like a charm and it's all consistent and logical with what we've investigated thus far. I don't know whatever we'll do with you now that we know everything. What do you have to say for yourself?"

"...I'm sorry?" Emily shrugs, unsure what could possibly be so bad about her, "I know I lied about who I am all this time, but come on: I've been a loser my whole life and I just wanted to be somebody special for a change. Who cares if I used to be some unlikable autistic loser girl in high school? All I ever did with my life was get bad grades and write crappy fanfics: is that such a crime to hide? You would never have given me a chance if you knew I was nothing. I don't get why it's such a big-"

"We don't care who you were before you came here," Uina cynically remarks, "What we care about is who you are right this very second. What do you have to say for yourself."

"...I don't know," Emily answers, completely honest, "Julia and Anna talked about me having some special destiny, but I think they have the wrong person. There's nothing to me. I don't have any magic and while it used to bother me, I don't even care any more. I don't want power any more. I don't want money and fame any more. I don't care if Riku hates my guts and I was too dumb to believe it. Even if he turned around, I don't think I'd take his offer. I'm past all of that."

"Then what do you want?" Uina asks, still holding tight to every last scrap of information he has. It sure is frustrating how he apparently wants to prove something; as though Emily is so completely untrustworthy that she has to be manipulated into revealing her true self. Well, there's no way she's getting out of this unscathed, so she may as well be completely transparent.

"Honestly?" Emily asks, building up the courage within to defy her old friends' ideals. These next few sentences are going to hurt.

"Preferably," Uina sarcastically replies. He probably already knows what she's going to say, but here goes.

"I don't want to be in this universe any more," Emily explains, not entirely confidant but knowing better than to lie at this time, "This place sucks. Nobody good ever wins. Everybody is doomed to be Heartless food forever. Every year, billions of people die to the Heartless and any idiot can take control of them and kill a billion more. Discord is still around and selling dangerous stuff to everybody. UCoP is gone, Mickey is gone, the academy is gone, the Matriarchy can't be stopped by any military in the universe, and they're going to kill us all. This has been going on for tens of thousands of years and won't ever stop."

"But there is a way to stop them," Uina continues, "No matter how big an army they get, they'll never be as big as the Heartless. With Maleficent expelled and Goldwater dead, they can't control the Heartless like they used to and since we're a mobile group, even their Darkside summoning bombs won't stop us. Besides, we could easily get something even more powerful: Lightside and its disciples. Together, we-"

"Why even bother?" Emily cuts in, not even bothering to comment on his semi-plausible lapse of loyalty to the original cause, "It would take forever to get rid of all of them the way they hide their true numbers even from themselves and after that, then what? Who's going to run all those planets? They'll all just be conquered by local war- and crime-lords that don't even have the Matriarchy's mistaken belief of their own goodness. If we do nothing, the Matriarchy will just conquer the universe and do... whatever it is they're willing to kill all those people for. I don't know. Julia didn't tell me."

"If we want to get rid of the Matriarchy," Emily continues, preemptively cutting Uina off, "We'll have to kill millions of innocent people just to break their rule and allow who knows how many trillions of people to suffer just because they hurt our feelings. Besides, nobody who has ever used the Heartless has won... although nobody who _hasn't_ used the Heartless ever won, either. We can't win no matter what we do. I don't want to fight any more."

"So what _do_ you want to do if you won't fight?" Uina counters. Well, that's an obvious rhetorical ploy if there ever was one. Too bad for him that Emily already knows the answer.

"I just want to go home," Emily whimpers, tears dripping down her face as she imagines the retribution heading her way, "It sucked back there, too, but at least it wasn't so completely _awful_. I used to have a good home, good parents, and a really big allowance that got me all the video games and fancy Japanese imported crap I wanted. I want to go back to being some loser girl playing video games and going to concerts with my best friend Jamie. Maybe Bush is in office, but they'll elect somebody new this year."

"I could have sworn Bush was ousted in '93..." Uina ponders, apparently not quite believing her just on that one tidbit alone.

"It's his son," Emily corrects, "George W. Bush."

"So you'd rather run away than face your problems?" Uina asks, not bothering to continue that branch. Again, obvious dead end rhetoric.

"Because I've done a whole lot of good..." Emily sarcastically replies, "You know what? Yes. I want to run away. I don't want to die or see any more of my friends die. I don't want to kill a lot of normal people that just signed up because it pays well and force their families to suffer. I mean, I don't _care_, but... I _should_. I don't want to throw the universe into chaos and make it an even worse place just because the Matriarchy hurt our feelings. I don't think they're right to be so cruel to us, but I don't think what we were doing was very 'right', either. Whatever. If we fight and die, we lose. If we fight and win, we lose. The only way to win is not to play at all."

"...poetically put," Uina concedes, his tone still critical, "I dig the _WarGames_ reference. So you finally accept what I've been saying all this time?"

"...yeah, why not?" Emily attempts to shrug, her shoulders giving out really fast, "Do you still think we can make that portal?"

"Portal is out of the question," Uina directly states, "As part of the liquidation of UCoP after they finally defeated us, they took away everything I had that was even slightly dangerous... which was basically everything. It's not like I lost a whole lot, anyway: I realized a long time ago there aren't enough Heartless cores in the universe to produce a sharp enough energy spike to pierce the dimensions. I heard they're using my prototype Energy Redirector on the field without testing it; the idiots."

"So we're screwed?" Emily asks with total sincerity.

"Not just yet," Uina says with just a tinge of optimism, "There is a way we _could_ get back... a way that we need you for, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Before I get into the details, I just want to confirm some things. First, you are aware you're not your parents' child any more, aren't you? Even if by some miracle this method brings you back close to when you left, your body is... different and you cannot be genetically linked to either David or Angela. The leaked documents make them sound like really nice people, but there's the possibility they won't believe you're their daughter. Is that okay?"

"What choice do I have?" Emily answers, "If I can't go back to mom and dad, I guess I'll just join the military. It could be like that movie _G.I. Jane_... I don't know. I never saw that movie."

"You didn't miss out on much," Uina cynically responds. The room goes silent as Emily literally hangs there, waiting for some kind of prompt. This conversation sure did die without going anywhere...

"...I don't know what you want or why I'm hanging like this," Emily quietly says after about half a minute, blinking about a cup of water from her eyes, "But would you please just turn off that damn light?"

"We need a moment to discuss," Uina vaguely states, the room going into a near-inaudible scurry of whispers. Just like that.

If there's one thing Emily utterly hates about her experience in this universe, it's the secrecy. While she can appreciate that she really is an 'overtrained thug', she feels at least a little insulted that they can't even tell her why she has to be restrained like this... in fact, she's starting to wonder if maybe Uina isn't exactly honest about his loyalties right now. He always did come across as the kind of person willing to take a better offer if it works in his best interest. Well, she'd have to get some kind of proof before confronting him... not like she'll ever get the chance if it's true.

"...okay, then..." Uina continues after a few more minutes, his voice somber, "Given the information that the Matriarchy leaked and we confirmed, you do, in fact, have a destiny and they have a pretty good reason to prevent it from happening. You see, the 'ancient destroyer' isn't just a name thrown around by some dead old people: it's her destined role. Her purpose has always been and always will be to destroy Kingdom Hearts and you were brought over here to help her in her time of need. The leak confirms this, their sources confirm it, and after what happened on Amaterasu, it's impossible to deny there's something so very _dangerous_ inside you. Since Kingdom Hearts, flawed and malfunctioning it may be, is the thread holding this whole place together like a house of cards, that makes you an _enemy of the universe_."

"Peachy," Emily responds dryly. So all this time she has suspected being little more than a pawn turns out to be literally true. Well, she's ready for her execution in the name of the greater good.

"And you know what?" Uina says with an upwards shift of tone, a loud beep emanating from behind the light. A series of cranks and hisses call out from all around Emily, each one sending a shudder through her body. She feels herself sink just a little as the sound dies down, her leashes easing up on her restraint. All at once, they lash backwards and snap right off in a disorienting moment of near-zero gravity. She flops straight down to the ground, sharp pangs of pins and needles bursting through her numb body. Well, this sure is an improvement...

After a few labored breaths that tingle her windpipe, the blinding light shuts off with a loud crack. As if having accustomed herself to looking at the surface of the sun, the sudden lack of light leaves nothing but a wall of that green stuff blocking her vision. She blinks over and over as the protective sheen slowly creeps away, her dark vision not adjusting quite so fast.

Through the holes in this green curtain, she manages to start picking out some of the people in the crowd. Right behind the boxy set of brass and blue spotlights is Uina, of course, looking just like his usual Michael Keaton-reminiscent self in a casual khaki and sweater combo. It's also no surprise that Axel is here, wearing a rather generic black T-shirt and jeans combo. To one side of the duo is Riku, back in his signature sleeveless vinyl vest and baggy jean outfit that Emily forgot even existed. As if mirroring that same nostalgia, Chou is right beside him in her old fuchsia dress of silk and moss. She certainly looks chipper; maybe she isn't so sick after all?

But the crowd hardly ends there. Right alongside many of Emily's long time companions is... Anna? What the hell is she doing here? Just... what?

"Call us your conspirators," Riku says with total confidence, saluting Emily by crossing an arm over his chest. Okay, now things have gone completely weird...

"What is _she_ doing here?" Emily asks as she starts picking herself up through her numbness, that question taking immediate prominence over quite a few others.

"I decided to join this ragtag bunch of misfits," Anna answers jestfully, saluting as well.

"After you converted that hybrid into a Lightside," Riku explains with total sincerity before Emily can make a comment, "Blue and white fought us off and captured you in all the confusion. Jamie here broke through their armada and saved you before they got back to the Fort Demilune Hazardous Material Testing Facility. She surrendered to us, explained everything, and once we knew she was legit, we agreed to help her."

"...zuh?" Emily mutters in disbelief, blinking her still-aching eyes a few times, "What happened on Amaterasu?"

"Amaterasu is gone," Uina explains somberly, "It got overrun by the Lightside Heartless and every single person that didn't escape has been turned into one of them. Blue and white tried really hard to save it, but it happened too fast and that hybrid was way too strong. Nothing could even touch it; even Darkside was banished back into the Realm of Darkness by it. They've pooled all their resources into preventing the horde from spreading to other worlds, so now is the best time for us to carry out our plan."

"What the..." Emily mutters again, feeling starting to return in her fingers, toes, and back, "You said I 'converted' Julia, but I... I don't... what the... but... I don't have any... what... does that mean I killed five billion people?"

"Not really," Riku answers, "More around two billion. I think blue and white got most of the people living on the other continents off in time."

"It's not your fault," Anna helpfully comforts, picking up some kind of flat black thing from a nearby table and starting towards Emily, "How do you feel?"

"I killed two billion people..." Emily slowly answers at she looks at her hands, blinking rapidly to try and get the glare around her arms out of her eyes, "...and I don't even feel that bad about it. Am I a bad person?"

"No," Uina answers simply, "It just means the conditioning Mickey had us put you through worked. You're not supposed to feel any remorse."

"And we're the good guys... I'm so lost right now," Emily admits, sinking back down onto her hands. Whatever that machine was doing must have gone above and beyond merely holding her in place because what's coming through the numbness doesn't feel quite right. It's as if her skin is cool down to the deepest layers, but not the kind of coldness that would accompany either a lack of blood or a busted climate control system. Instead, it's a calming smoothness washing over her skin; something shimmery. Feels almost reassuring; as if she has been liberated from more than another of Uina's contraptions and can now feel a whole lot more in the very air around her.

Still, she feels put off by the awkward stares of everybody else in the room. What could possibly interest Riku, Uina, Axel, and even Chou so much? At least Anna seems pretty confident in Emily's appearance as she slowly strides forward, but it's more of a sense of knowing rather than a sense of relaxation. Stopping a pace away and inadvertently blocking everybody from sight with her impractical wingspan, she kneels down and holds up the flat black tile.

"This might come as a shock..." Anna moodily warns, turning the object around to reveal what seems to be a picture on the other side. It appears to be a head-on close-up of a supernatural humanoid figure of sorts inside a cold steel room. Naked to her skin and down on her hands and knees, she looks vulnerable in the total exposure of her supple, silky, radiant pale skin. It's plainly obvious her very appearance is magical the way it lacks a single stretch mark, fat fold, skeletal ridge, mole, ingrown hair, razor burn, visible vein, or anything else that wouldn't be airbrushed out before finding its way into a fashion magazine.

But that's not what makes this person so otherworldly; it's only the beginning. Draped across her back is a pair of brilliant white wings, their immaculately feathered wingspan naturally curving them just short of the ground a good two meters from tip to tip. There's also definitely a certain something in her untamed white hair, softly glowing green eyes and innocent face that Emily can relate to; a certain purity of form, purity of spirit, purity of essence. Even the figure within this very portrait seems alive, her chest rising and falling with her soft breathing... breathing in time with Emily...

As if suddenly realizing that this is no portrait, Emily jolts backwards in total shock. She doesn't even need to see the figure in the mirror perfectly synchronize her actions to just flat out feel the difference in her very balance and movement. Staring at her heavily distorted appearance in the mirror, she tries extending her awareness through the numb mass on her back and ends up twitching the left wing ever so slightly. With a knowing smile on her face, Anna imitates the twitch as if to assure her that she's on the same page. Not really the most comforting thing given her reputation and general demeanor thus far...

With Emily sitting there on the cold steel floor, so detached from her new body as to not even feel shame at her nudity, it take a minute more of awkward silence before anyone volunteers to break it.

"Welcome to the next level," Anna says with an equally welcoming smile just short of a smirk. With a hundred reasons for this mutation flowing through her thoughts, Emily's mind settles on the most plausible outcome.

"...Axel, what the _hell_ did-" Emily harshly attempts.

"I did nothing, I swear!" Axel quickly juts out with a step backward, throwing his hands in the air. Does he really thing she's going to smite him or something?

"He's telling the truth," Uina helpfully reaffirms, with Riku and Chou giving nods as well.

"...and you're all okay with this?" Emily asks in shock, unwittingly gesturing with both hands and wings, "Why?"

"Why not?" Riku counters with a shrug, "Maybe you've been... _changed_, for better or worse, but deep down inside, you're still you. You're still the same person that has been so loyal to us for all these months and for us to shun you just because you look different would be horrible."

"But look at me!" Emily counters in surprise, stretching her wingspan out as far as possible, "I'm not even _human_. I'm some... _freak of nature_ and I'm supposed to be some enemy of the universe! How do I know I'm not going to go crazy and kill you all?"

"Because we trust you," Riku calmly responds, his honesty almost crushing, "Besides, isn't this what you've always wanted? To be some kind of special superwoman with all sorts of magical power? Why are you angsting so much about it now?"

"...I never knew what I wanted," Emily sighs as she forces herself to calm down, bringing her hands to her forehead, "I just... I don't know. I don't know if anything I do really matters if I can be changed into something like this without even wanting it. It just all feels so pointless if I have no control over my destiny, but I guess I should take the good with the bad... or something. What happened that turned me into this?"

"You've _always_ been this way..." Anna explains, placing the mirror down to the side, "...well, it's more complicated than that. When Metadronis recruited me to save this universe, she gave me so much power, trained me how to use it, and in return for being her chosen champion, she let me make a wish. I wished you could be brought over here and given the same kind of wonderful body I was blessed with. I could have wished for anything I wanted, but all I really wanted was you by my side."

"...you really _are_ Jamie, aren't you?" Emily mutters, that last lingering doubt vanishing upon such a heartfelt sentiment, "I'm sorry I never believed you, but just... look at you... look at me..."

"After I failed in my task," the black-clad girl that is undeniably Jamie continues without a hitch, "I guess the celestial bureaucracy decided they went too far with me and got a new idiot boss or something. I don't know. They just threw everybody that came their way into this universe without any direction for all these years after. I'm just happy that Metadronis apparently did remember her promise even if it took so long to be granted. If I had to guess on why you were first sent in that first shell, it's because of... I really don't know... to sneak you past management? Or maybe it was to round up this group? Isn't the idea of fate and destiny guiding your path really kind of a creepy thing to think about?"

"Just a little," Emily understates, staring at her slender arms, "So, um... what do I get out of this?"

"...I don't know," Jamie shrugs, getting back up and backing away slowly, "I might have most of the answers, but I can only see so much. I'll try to help you find out what that is and train you, but we only have about a week before we lose our chance and have to wait for another."

"Touching reunion," Uina comments, tossing a stack of beach towels over to Emily, "Help yourself."

"Sorry," Emily apologizes, working quickly to restore her modesty, "It's just-"

"You don't feel like yourself," Uina interrupts, "Yeah, whatever. I presume you know this is how you're going to be going back to your world. No magical reset back to that brown haired, hazel eyed, almost-anorexic girl on the other side: we're crashing down the barrier regardless what the seraphim think of it. Now, I have no clue how the people might react to this, but the theological comparisons alone are a potentially sticky situation... you're going to want to stay north of the Mason-Dixie line and away from Vatican City, that's for certain. When we emerge on the other side, you and Jamie are going to be an instant celebrities for better or for worse. Are you sure you want to risk that?"

"...as opposed to the huge welcome I'd get in this universe?" Emily asks, the uncertainty starting to give way to something resembling personal pride... or get masked by it, anyway, "Hell _yeah_, I'm going back like this. Anything's better than here."

"Right, then," Uina shrugs, turning to the others, "Let's see what else we need to... oh, yeah. Sora. We need to find him and get him on board for a full house. An-"

"I'll do it," Riku volunteers almost immediately.

"Of course you will," Uina comments dryly, turning to face the black-winged girl, "Jamie, are you satisfied enough to tell us your secret plan now or do we need to waste a few days getting Sora back before you'll talk? Time's a wastin'."

"Nah, I'm happy now," Jamie states, walking over to some kind of free-standing bulletin board that blends in pretty well with the background, "Before we can go through with my plan, we need to get rid of my curse. The ancients did a great job with their whole 'winner takes loyalty regardless whether or not they want it' system, but they left a gaping hole in who gets first dibs. The person who actually freed me doesn't know she owns me, so I'm kind of stuck in an ownerless state until she stakes her claim."

"Nice to know even the almighty ancients didn't do any bug testing," Uina comments, "So what are we going to do to fix this?"

"Oh, it's quite simple, really," Jamie states, flipping the board over to reveal a huge collage of pictures revealing a blonde haired woman in a green dress, "We're going to _kill_ the rapist."


	82. Powerpoint Slides and Pie Charts

So once again, Emily's life has been overhauled beyond her control. It's bad enough how she has been thrown into this universe with little guidance, apparently 'drafted' into Mickey's private army, and twice had to go into hiding to escape the clutches of blue and white. At least through all that, she had been fairly consistent in her body and mind, but with the former completely revised, the latter struggles to cope with the changes. Sure, she may have been completely changed at least once before upon entry into this forsaken universe, but at least she was still human and kind of resembled her wishes; now, she's just... something else entirely.

Still, she at least tries to take it in stride. Sure, she now has to adjust to having such a significantly larger personal space to keep in mind and unlike Axel's big plan, she also lacks the folding capability that made it at least a little plausible. Any place built for plain old human beings is going to be an uncomfortably tight place for her to live, but given time, she'll cope. She has to.

Given her own personal room on this refitted space ship, she now works to get her new form burned into her memory. Posing into a set of free standing mirrors, she looks over the outfit summoned upon her. Just like her ancient counterpart, it, also, draws extensively from the darker side of Victorian fashion. While equally monochrome, it instead favors whites with only the slightest suggestion of black at the seams and tips. At least she's given the luxury of a form-fitting sleeveless blouse, buttoned jacket vest, dark grey clogs, and some relaxed fit shorts underneath the side drape overskirt. Not a complete outfit since it leaves her arms, back, and legs from the knee down exposed, but it does certainly go well with those intrusive wings. Soft, wistful, angelic, ethereal, and yet holding a mysterious intrigue; the kind of look appealing in her imagination, but not quite so much in real life.

Of course, she supposedly can change it all to her heart's desire through force of will alone, but no matter what poses she strikes in the mirror, she just cannot get anything to happen. This body certainly didn't come with either a manual or an easy configuration mode and even as she ponders over the various possibilities that might be her reality, she doesn't even get a hint in any direction. About the only thing she can do is fly with great difficulty, but in a mostly two dimensional, grounded existence, what good is that?

Finally losing her conviction after so many hours of frankly ridiculous posing, she decides to give in to that latent emotion and starts crying into her open hands. Let it all come down on her...

"Hey, there..." quietly greets a masculine voice, forcing Emily to look through her fingers. Standing behind her and reflected in the mirror is none other than Riku, his face looking kind of doubtful. Now how did he enter completely unnoticed?

"Why didn't you kn-" Emily attempts.

"Shhhh shhh shhh," Riku quickly hushes, glancing around the room, "Nobody knows I'm here and I'd like to keep it that way."

"Okay..." Emily whispers, wiping her tears, "...I'm sorry I lied about who I am all this time. It's just..."

"Don't worry about it," Riku consoles, "We knew for a long time you were lying, but we left it alone because it was harmless... do you feel okay?"

"Well..." Emily whispers, sniffling just a little, "...not really..."

"You don't know how to react to this, do you?" Riku quietly asks, gesturing to the wings.

"Of course not," Emily answers, gently swaying the wings up a little, "It's just..."

"...if you're not your body," Riku finishes for her, "Then what are you?"

"Exactly," Emily says, rubbing her fingers along her form, "I look at that reflection and I know it's what I am. I see it at eye level, I move just like it, and I feel the weight of it, but I can't believe it's me. It's not who I am... what I am. It's like I'm trapped in a simulation room. I don't know what to think."

"I know how you feel," Riku quietly assures, gently massaging the top stem of Emily's left wing, "When I lost myself to the darkness two years ago, I was drifting between two forms. Xehanort had... _infected_ me and wanted me to give myself to him. He thought he could force me to surrender by making me look like him and I almost did. I would look in the mirror, see that face looking back at me, and sometimes wonder who I am... what I am. I got through it by telling myself that no matter how I look, I am who I am... and stuff. I don't know."

"Thank you," Emily politely responds, feeling some of the stress get released through his uninvited massage. Lapping up this unusual affection, she crouches down to her knees and spreads her wings to make it easier on him. An inviting gesture that he's more than willing to accept, kneading at her wing with his gentle fingers. So unlike him, but any affection in this trying time is more than welcome to her.

"Do you think that's Jamie in the other room?" Riku asks out of the blue, still sensually massaging away.

"...to be honest," Emily responds, thinking hard about all she knows, "I'm still not convinced. It's just... I want to believe, but at the same time... I don't."

"Tell me more," Riku softly responds, moving to the other wing.

"Well..." Emily starts, thinking back to everything she can remember about her old life, "I've known Jamie a really long time and... this doesn't feel like her. I want to _think_ she said she doesn't want anything to do with Gothic fashion but... I don't know. She always kind of followed her own code and she seemed to like punk a lot... hmm... that outfit kind of looks like something Gerard Way would wear if he was a girl, but... no, it's not that kind of gloomy... I don't know. I know Jamie at least had breasts and I can't imagine her as Gothic Lolita."

"I think she changed you into this," Riku cuts to the chase, making his way to the outer rim of the wing, "After that hybrid dropped you, while your bones were crushed and your skin was melted to show some kind of brightly shining thing, you were still you. It wasn't until she brought you back that you looked like... this. Your wings don't even really feel very real."

"You really think she's able to do this?" Emily asks, scrutinizing her unheld wing. Well, even if it doesn't 'feel' real on the outside, it certainly feels so very real to her.

"Easily," Riku answers, letting Emily's wing flop back to its usual position, "Xehanort was only an artificial wizard and he just needed to touch me once to infect me. The so-called 'ancient destroyer' that could crush the precursors and steal my keyblade away from me? No problem."

"Why would she do this to me?" Emily asks, "Do you think she's playing me for something?"

"I think she's playing us all," Riku speculates, tapping a loose strand of Emily's hair back, "She might have Uina and Axel convinced and Chou... well, Chou is loyal to you and me, so... yeah. Anyway, what she says sounds too good to be true. So if we go destroy Kingdom Hearts like she wants, all the magic will vanish harmlessly and yet we'll be able to get to your universe? Nothing good can come from that. When Sora found Kingdom Hearts, he wished for the Destiny Islands to come back and while it worked, it screwed up so many other things as well."

"...Cenari," Emily mutters, realizing something, "Maleficent called Cenari the chosen champion of Kingdom Hearts and he was really screwed up... why was he working for Maleficent, anyway?"

"Beats me," Riku shrugs, "I think Maleficent uses some kind of charm magic. She didn't even seem that hideous to me until I realized how wrong she was."

"...what do you think we should do about Jamie..." Emily asks, pausing a second with that name, "...Anna?"

"I agree with the first part of her plan," Riku starts, "I mean... Mint _deserves_ it after what she did to Kairi... and what she did to all those other people. I looked at that Matriarchy bounty dispatch and it's just... wow... even if she never came to this universe in the first place, she's still way beyond saving."

"Yep," Emily confirms with a sad nod.

"Go ahead and help her with that," Riku almost-dismissively states, "I'm going to talk with Sora about all of this. It's just... there has to be _something_ we can do to save this universe instead of running away to another."

"Er..." Emily mutters, thinking back on earlier, "...I'm sorry I said all that. About-"

"You don't need to explain," Riku reassures, "We're all feeling this crisis now that we don't have anyone but each other to rely on. Besides, the fact that you're staying with us says everything that needs to be said."

"Thank you," Emily sighs poignantly, unsure of what she should do. Events certainly have backed her into a corner and while they can at least get vengeance against Mint for wanton acts of inhumane cruelty, cracking that faceless blue and white vice hold is almost the same as trying to move a mountain by oneself: futile and certain to result in a broken back. As sad as it may be to admit, it probably will ultimately come down to just running away where they cannot be reached and allowing the so-called 'Matriarchy' to rule. After all, they actually don't seem too bad...

Only upon Riku shifting a little to the side does Emily notice Chou standing just past the doorway. She certainly looks kind of... blank: as if she got ordered to do something she doesn't quite understand. A more telling story is in how she's holding a familiar old briefcase with both hands in front of her belly. While it has been so very, very long since Emily has seen that attache case, she can only recognize it as the one that held all her weapons all the way back at her entry to this universe.

"...something up, Chou?" Emily asks, turning around to face her properly.

"Miss Jamie wanted me to bring you this," Chou answers, walking to meet Emily at the halfway point and offering the case. Kind of weird that she's getting back her old guns given all the improvements Uina made on their designs, but whatever. Imagine her surprise when she opens the case to find not her black steel weapons from before, but some kind of glowing silver version instead. Engraved with tribal markings almost reminiscent of antique mantelpiece guns of the old west, they look just that much more potent just through a visual redesign alone.

Yet, it's not just the guns that got an overhaul. The blades of the twin knives conform to the same glowing, engraved silver as the guns, but the grips have been replaced with a glittering yet clear crystal. Smooth to the touch and sloped with perfect proportion, they represent the kind of ornamental weapons that she always felt she wanted... and yet, in spite of all her wistful dreams on that topic, she finds herself rather... underwhelmed...

"...I have no clue what this is," Emily says, unsure of the best response to this gift. After all, it's obviously more doting on the part of that girl in black and with her nebulous integrity, it's better to cast a critical eye on anything coming from her.

"'Jamie' sure does like you, huh?" Riku comments, walking up to Emily's side, "Go ahead and use them: we need every last bit of help we can get."

"Okay..." Emily says, unsure how to take that. What if they have some mind control component or... nah.

"Well, then," Riku says, walking past Chou, "I better get going. I'll be back in a week as planned."

"...how did you cure yourself?" Emily asks just before Riku opens the door.

"...by killing the parasite," Riku flatly answers.

* * *

**.**

* * *

If there's one thing high stake criminals have in common, it's style. Anyone desperate enough for some quick cash can steal a TV or mug a pedestrian, but it takes a certain je ne sais quoi to have the gift of genius and choose to apply it towards ill-gains. After all, somebody with the required skills in management, coordination, and sheer brass to run a syndicate could probably make so much more simply by shifting their efforts to a genuine corporation, but where's the thrill in that? And what fun is there in killing people when it's sanctioned by the resident government?

So it is only a given that a meeting of such criminals appears less like a morally bankrupt business conference and more like a chintzy peacock competition. Overdone business suits, gold watches, glittering jewelry; the works. Oddly enough, the person sitting at the head of the table is easily the least overdressed of everybody present. With a simple black cloak and a dull sceptre adorned with a puke green orb, she looks positively sickly in comparison. Instead, the slack has to be picked up by her two bodyguards: a blonde girl in a gaudy green dress and an angelic black-haired girl in a starkly contrasting black and white dress.

Still, even if this apparent executive chairperson isn't the most showy person present, she nonetheless chose a fitting venue for all the money flaunting. The long, rectangular table is made of only the finest mahogany and lined with ornamental platinum of grand designs. Every chair is made with only the finest leather and soft enough to cushion the many fat people straining their joints. Even the requisite computer screens facing each person is encased in solid gold, the software just as glitzy and no doubt requiring top-level specs for their menu buttons alone. And while the room is just a little dim in its lighting to give everybody that ominous, shadowy look, it's still quite clear that it was designed with trillion munny business deals in mind.

So much weight in the materials makes even the simple act of somebody slamming a door open give a thunderous crash. Such an act proves just how on-edge everybody is as they all jerk their heads to face, many of the bodyguards reaching for their hidden weapons. It's only lucky that they all seem to recognize this husky, curly-haired, bearded man in an ill-fitting business suit as one of their own lest this meeting start off with a downer... or upper as the case might be for some of them.

"Sorry oim layte," the man declares with his thick voice, casually ignoring everybody as he walks to his seat. Here's somebody that probably could have used a bullet graze or two a long time ago.

"Fashionably late as usual," the head woman coldly comments into the microphone standing on her desk, glaring at the man. Not like he can really see her too well, but she does so anyway.

"We caun't all be os perfect os you, _Maleficent_," the man responds, stressing the last word a bit as he plops into his chair.

"Switch up your accent again, Basil?" snidely remarks his neighbor: a well-toned, dark skinned man in his early thirties. Of the various kinds of loudness on display at this table, this man certainly takes a unique direction with his. With merely a form fitting white tank top, blue jeans, and sunglasses as clothing, all attention is drawn to his dozen facial piercings and extensive tribal tattoos all across his skin. The man dubbed Basil merely has to take one glance to dismiss him with a passive wave of his hand.

"Now that we're all present and accounted for," the sickly woman named Maleficent continues, "We can begin. Before I continue, can anyone tell me why we're all here?"

"Money; most definitely money," pipes in a hideously fat, forty-something man without even a delay to think about it. While Basil may not really be a picture of health and beauty, he looks positively Greek in comparison to this barely-human blob of flesh. As if wanting to maintain proper ratios of clothing to fat, he's way overdressed in a white, four layer cross between a tuxedo and a frock coat. With a gigantic gemstoned ring on each finger, he taps his undersized platinum walking cane with a downright irritating clacking. An all-around unpleasant person to be around in all senses.

"Power; I want my planet back," chimes in a forty-something man of about a quarter the weight from the other end of the table. While everybody else is presumably a mere citizen working against the establishment, this man has the gall to come here dressed in full military regalia and a presidential sash. No doubt an exiled leader and judging by the company he's now keeping, probably a despotic tyrant at that.

"I'm just in it because I hate those blue and white gits," responds an older man in the middle fitting comfortably between those weight extremes but still quite a bit above any healthy standard. While his outfit is comparatively tame, it would still be out of place and maybe a little garish in certain other settings. Consisting of a red double-breasted overcoat with gold studs, over sized grey gloves, and a blue cap, he looks to be about a century behind the times. Even in spite of this innocuous appearance, everybody else looks at him with much colder eyes than anyone else; an almost primal hatred.

"All valid reasons given certain circumstances," Maleficent comments, "But that is not our unifying theme. Think deeper and tell me: what ties us all together?"

Of course, with a group so lacking in basic empathy, it isn't too big a stretch to find them lacking in philosophical reasoning as well. Everybody at this table find themselves dumbstruck by such a question. Isn't a given that all of this falls under the category of personal advancement? Why strain the point when there's illicit business to be done?

"...because we are all in this room?" Basil sarcastically remarks, causing one or two others to groan.

"I think we all know why we're all here in this room," Maleficent continues, barely acknowledging Basil's oh-so-helpful suggestion, "We all work in the business of corruption. Sure, we might dress it up with selfish entitlement and vaguely directed rage, but at the core of it all, we are not working towards the greater good. Nobody can deny it; by walking through that door, you agree to work with anyone and everyone to achieve your goals. Whatever. It. Takes."

"Aur yoo collin' us all evil?" Basil rudely interrupts in a mock-offended tone.

"...the coachman has the right idea, however," Maleficent continues after a short pause, "Other organizations with universal domination on their minds have come and gone, but none threaten us as much as the latest group seeking that golden apple. For most of us, who is in charge doesn't really matter so long as they can be bought, but blue and white is different. They're so dangerous to all of us because not only are they both ruthless and efficient, but they are also completely convinced in their own moral superiority. They cannot be bargained with and their very governing system makes them impervious to any compromise of their integrity: corruption is damage that they route around. So long as they stand tall and grow more powerful by the moment, people like us are an endangered species heading to extinction. They are completely incorruptible."

"No such thing exists," comments a man in his early fifties, still heavy but in a stocky, muscular way. Just like the tyrant, he's also dressed in military regalia but in such a way as to suggest the past rather than the present. The kind of man who is no doubt flaunting his heritage to appeal as a particular kind of mercenary: the kind that can herd a bunch of other cats into a cohesive whole with some zippy name like the dirty dozen.

"This is nutso," Basil intrudes once again, his accent slipping, "Why the hell should we listen to you? Your plans never work out and nobody knows what the hell you even wan-"

With but a flicking motion from Maleficent's hand to signal her, the dark angelic girl leaps straight over the table and divebombs towards the arrogant man. Landing straight in front of Basil with legs crouched and a resonating thud on the table, a gleaming red spear materializes with bladed tip against his throat and her eyes a mere centimeter from his. Taking less than a second and completely startling in her every movement, it comes as no surprise that many of the hair-trigger bodyguards instinctively draw their weapons and just barely restrain themselves from attacking.

"My goals are a private matter," Maleficent continues after giving Basil a few seconds to register the shock, "But rest assured they are quite compatible with your's: after all, nobody goes to war with blue and white without a lot of weaponry and as you can see, we are more than resourceful enough to pay you handsomely. Still, if you are unsatisfied with the accommodations, I am more than happy to have none other than the universal destroyer of legend escort you from the premises."

"...oim ah-kay," Basil responds with accent back in place, gently pushing the spear away from his throat, "Dawn't 'of to come aun so straung."

"You're doing great," the girl in black whispers to Basil as she desummons her weapon, pecking an unromantic kiss on his cheek and leaping backwards with a mild gush of wind. Landing behind Maleficent, she resumes her statuesque position without paying any mind to the stares she's getting from all around the table.

"...I wouldn't dismiss Basil so quickly," speaks up the brawny military man, "Blue and white may be the biggest fish in the sea, but they are not the only ones. The Daeh Yeo Mar Empire might be more open to corruption, but they're way too pissed off after all of this to be anything but a liability for decades. And while UCoP and Mickey might be dead, we can't forget about Sora and his cronies; with Axel and his old Xemnas Corp. resources on their side, they might stand a chance. Then there's that snafu swarm of Lightside spreading like wildfire..."

"They are not worthy of our attention," Maleficent dismisses, "All of them are preoccupied with their losing battles against blue and white. If we are to succeed against this juggernaut, we need to pool our efforts against it while it is still divided on three fronts; to help them achieve victory on any would be our undoing. Rest assured that with the ancient destroyer on our side, we can wipe out insignificant bugs like the Daeh Yeo Mar Empire any time we want."

"I read blue and white's dispatch about you," chimes in the military man again, cutting Basil off, "I'm not one to fret over collateral, but your indiscriminate destroy planets, kill innocent people by the billion, and ask questions later modus operandi is _fubar_. We can't just let the loose cannons of the Heartless or your pet angel run rampant or we'll lose way more than we could ever gain."

"You aren't losing your tenacity, are you, Mr. Rourke?" Maleficent dryly remarks, motioning towards him with her sceptre. After taking a second to remember this particular gesture, the black-clad girl strides across the room and looms menacingly over the so-called 'Mr. Rourke'. Kind of a curious look the way she crouches at the hip and pokes her face into his from the side. Rourke doesn't seem too impressed by this; angel or no, she's still fresh looking and unproven.

"...he has a point," speaks up the hideously fat man in his deep, froggy voice, "Dead men pay no debts. We do this without any smoked planets or I'm out."

"Hear, hear," Basil unhelpfully chimes in. Losing interest in Rourke, the black-clad girl decides to cut around the corner towards that sack of blubber. She gives a forced smile as he shifts his eyes towards her, the effort of moving his neck apparently too much for him.

"Gentlemen, please," Maleficent quickly backpedals before the room turns completely sour, "Destroying planets is clearly a drastic last resort; one that must be avoided. Despite what blue and white might have you believe, I do not indiscriminately destroy planets; in fact, during my short tenure with them, each one was chosen for its low civilian population. I may not be moral, but I am not reckless and I very much want a universe left to rule."

"She's lying, you know," the black-clad girl softly whispers as she comes up behind the fat man, draping an arm over his chest and resting her head upon his shoulder, "She just loooooves to see people die. It makes her stronger. The bigger, smarter, wealthier... heavier, the better."

"Don't you work for her?" the corpulent man asks, finally moving his head a little.

"Doesn't mean I have to be happy about it," the black-clad girl sighs, gently fiddling with the man's rings, "I hope none of that is chrysoprase or you'll be dead before you can even blink. It would be a shame to see such beautiful rings torn apart; I'd want a souvenir if you don't make it out of this room."

"...why I took in Cenari," Maleficent finishes to the doubtful glances of half the room. The black-clad girl gives a knowing smirk to the fat man as she backs away, wiping the smile off her face upon turning away from him. After a few paces brings her striding by the despot, she meets his gaze and makes some smug gun gesture towards him with a small pop of her lips. She follows up this doubtful expression by reaching to her other side and stroking one of the two commando bodyguards with a single finger, the soldier holding back his reaction. Four people down, two to go.

"So it's settled," Rourke says, "No smoked planets or we're all out."

"Agreed," Maleficent coldly responds in an obligatory tone, not reacting as Anna resumes her position as though nothing happened.

"How are we going to take down blue and white?" the froggy man says in a much more hostile tone, "Or were you just gonna kill everybody?"

"Blue and white is formidable," Maleficent admits out the gate, "Perhaps too formidable even for my dear apprentices to overcome, but they have one flaw that we lack: a governing philosophy. They want nothing more than what's best for the John and Mary Joe even if they have to force it upon them. They can easily dismiss tyrants, criminals, and monsters alike, but can they so easily strike down the common man?"

"Now _that's_ something I can get behind," Rourke says with a slight hint of admiration, "Astroturfing them until they back off. It's a long shot, but it could work. H-"

"Oi think we fawrgot something impawrtant," Basil cuts off, his tone rather smarmy, "We've ben hur ten minoutes and we dawn't even have a cool name. Wut kind of meeting is thos?"

"A productive one?" the tattooed man asks sarcastically, "Who gives a fig what we're called? It's all the same."

"...the angry mob," Rourke chimes in before Basil can get his next banal utterance out.

"What?" the tattooed man asks, confused.

"Let's call ourselves the angry mob," Rourke continues, "Think about it: blue and white doesn't want to hurt civvies and considers freedom of speech as one of the highest stations in life. The schmucks. If we pretend we're the primal uproar of the people with nobody guiding them, they'll be reluctant to tear us apart. It's perfect."

"An angry mob can go far," the despot comments in an approving tone, "Look what they did to me."

"I even have our chant," Rourke continues, putting on his best cadence voice, "We are the angry mob. We read the papers every day. We like who we like, we hate who we hate-"

"But we're awl-soh easuly swaiyed," Basil interrupts sarcastically.

"Hey," Rourke jabs back, "If you're not going to be helpful, get out of our sight. Plenty of arms dealing fish in the sea to take your place."

"Plonty ov merc'nary leaders, too," Basil counters with a smirk.

"Gentlemen, please," the despot chides, "We don't have to like each other to make this work. Let's all calm down and discuss how we're going to forward our agenda."

"You mean _your_ agenda," Basil says, his accent slipping once again.

"Same thing," the despot counters, "I want my planet, blue and white won't let me have it. Simple."

"...are we really this ghetto?" the tattooed man comments in a cynical tone, adjusting his shades a little.

"Excuse me?" asks the despot, clearly insulted.

"You're all trippin' if you think this plan will work," the tattooed man continues, "The common man don't care about no revolution. Blue and white would never fall for such nonsense."

"Need I remind we're paying you quadruple your going rate?" the froggy man asks, obviously very irritated.

"Money or no," the tattooed man says, rising up to his feet and kicking the chair back, "I don't take no broke-dick assignments. You kids have fun, now; I'll catch you all on the evening news."

With that hostile statement laid bare, the tattooed man makes his slick exit without even a passing glance back. The kind of maneuver only a man of grand self-esteem and an implacable belief in his own bad-assery would ever dare to pull; in fact, it almost seems like he just came simply to insult them. Still, while the fat man looks pretty peeved about it, everybody else is surprisingly chill about the whole ordeal. Speechless, sure, but only passingly.

"...well, thar goes awr dog," mock-sighs Basil.

"I guess we'll be needing a new assassin," Rourke also sighs, turning to the head of the table, "I don't suppose anyone over at Maleficent's camp has a replacement in mind?"

"Can't help you there," the black-winged girl mutters with a sly smirk.

"He says blue and white can't be discouraged..." the so-called coachman finally speaks up, "...but he's wrong. We need assassins and revolution? I have something that will do them both."

"I don't like where this is going..." Rourke quietly comments, the coachman either not hearing or otherwise disregarding him.

"Children!" the coachman triumphantly declares after a dramatic pause, eliciting blank stares and blinks from the other men in the room. The kind where they kind of knew where he was going, but don't believe he actually went there.

"You've gawt ta be kiddin-" Basil mutters.

"Children are _perfect_ for this," the coachman continues unabated, "They can be as strong as donkeys and just as stupid; so stupid, you can make them do anything! You can make them shoot at parades, stop bullets with their brains, and even blow themselves up! Younger is better; they don't even know their own mortality until they're at least eight years old!"

"...are you suggesting we sacrifice children?" the fat man asks in subdued shock, his thick jaw struggling not to go agape.

"A fitting plan, my dear coachman," Maleficent states in cold admiration, "Blue and white could only falter when pitted against children. There is nothing so discouraging..."

"Hey, Anna..." the girl in the green dress disrespectfully whispers over to the black-clad girl.

"Yes, rapist?" the dark angel now named 'Anna' responds in a flat voice.

"Oh, stop calling me that already," the other girl fumes.

"Okay, sure," Anna flatly says, "Yes, 'Mint'?"

"You know what that guy over there does?" the 'rapist' known as 'Mint' asks.

"Human trafficking," Anna promptly answers, shifting her eyes away from Mint.

"Well, obviously," Mint sarcastically quips, "But you know what else he does?"

"Can't say that I do," Anna says, now sounding a little uncomfortable.

"Even though he talks about sacrificing children," Mint continues, her voice heavy, "That's not the only thing he does with them. In fact, he likes the kids... really likes them... a lot..."

"He sounds like scum of the lowest kind," Anna sighs, still looking away from both Mint and the coachman. Even then, he still catches her eye in this dim light and makes some rather disquieting glare with a slight smirk on one side of his mouth; kind of a hungry look, almost.

"In fact," Mint continues right along, "I don't think many would shed tears for him should some... harm come to him... you know, of the grievous kind?"

"...I'll make sure an accident happens after he leaves," Anna offers, frowning just a little as she visualizes what she's going to do.

"Something prolonged and painful as hell?" Mint asks, sounding a bit hopeful.

"To the max," Anna reassures, glaring back at the coachman.

"Thank you," Mint says with a malicious smile, wiping it off as she turns back to the discussion at hand. It turns out the mood has soured significantly since Mint started this side conversation. For a change, Basil doesn't look too responsible; in fact, he's shying away from the heated stares that the other four men are casting upon each other. Maleficent gazes upon the men with just the tiniest hint of malicious glee; the kind reserved for a particularly involved spectator of a dog fighting match. It's almost as if this was the whole reason for calling this meeting in the first place.

"...I won't do it," Rourke declares, standing up and slamming his hands upon the table, "I won't lead children to suicide. No. You guys can all go to hell, I'm out."

"Sit your impudent ass back down," the despot harshly demands, also up on his feet and pointing across the table at the military man, "You signed a contract, we're going through with it."

"I'll double your refund," Rourke grudgingly offers, turning towards the exit, "Not like any court in the universe would uphold that contract, but screw the money. I'm not working with that _pig_ of a man."

"We're getting my planet back," the despot demands, whipping out a small gun with a noisy clack, "And like Maleficent said, we're going to do whatever. It. Takes."

"Oh, great, a pissing contest," Rourke sarcastically comments, turning back around without even the slightest bit of fear, "Are you really going to shoot me in front of all these people if I walk?"

"Yes," the despot succinctly answers, his bodyguards staring at him confused. It seems they weren't quite planning for such a situation.

"And you just let our pet assassin walk out so easily?" Rourke sighs, still standing.

"He didn't leave due to some pathetic 'moral' crap," the despot spits, "I won't have my revolution ruined by an anonymous tip to blue and white. No. You're in this no matter what. I'll even raise your salary."

"Then you'll be doing that with somebody else's money," the fat man pipes up, a scowl on his face, "Because I'm out as well."

"You, too?" the despot responds in surprise as he shifts his attention, "What happened to family honor?"

"The Falcone family does not deal with child murderers," the fat man harshly states, motioning one of his suit-wearing thugs over, "Tony, fetch my wheelchair."

"I can't believe this horse crap," the despot fumes in frustration, "What the hell is _wrong_ with you people?"

"Yeah!" the coachman finally contributes, "They're only children!"

"You shut your goddamn mouth," Rourke harshly responds, pulling out a gun of his own and aiming at the coachman, "It's only professional courtesy keeping you alive right now."

"Oh, professional friggin' courtesy," the despot quips, turning to look at both of his targets at once, "Professionals don't back out on contracts!"

"Professionals don't slaughter children!" Rourke shouts back, finally losing his temper.

"Drop your goddamn guns!" the fat man contributes to this frank discussion.

"**COME ON IN!**" Anna shouts towards the ceiling with arms outstretched, her statement punctuated by a loud bang.


	83. Excessive Force

"There's the signal," Emily announces, blinking out of her induced trance. It definitely feels kind of weird for her to finally have some semblance of control over the visions... if just a fleeting control of unnecessary consent. Unfortunately, there still comes that disorientation of blipping from a gaudy executive board to the humble interior of this 'appropriated' station wagon, made doubly worse by the smoggy, stormy city barely visible in the cover of night and endless battering water on the windshield. She can barely make out the target high rise through all the swirling yellow of windows blurring the skyline.

Even with the car shifting into gear and starting a U-turn, she still finds it odd nobody responds to her; almost kind of offensive, really. Awkwardly leaning back into her cramped wings upon the rear-facing seat, she looks over to the other passengers. Sure enough, with Uina in his grey military fatigues at the wheel, Axel in his iconic black cloak across from him, and Chou in her mossy pink dress behind them staring blankly ahead, it's not because they've somehow been replaced during her brief trance. Well, if there's one note she doesn't want to enter this operation with, it's this. With an awkward twisting of her torso, she plomps herself back down with knees on the seat and hands on the headrest.

"Is something wrong?" Emily asks, burrowing her chin beside her hands. It sure has been a while since she has been in a station wagon like this. She definitely has grown just a little since that single digit age... in more ways than she would have ever imagined.

"...not that I'm aware of," Uina answers after a little too long, "Is there something we should know?"

"Not really..." Emily admits, Uina's eyes catching her's in the rear-view mirror.

"Then there's nothing to say," Uina sarcastically sighs, adjusting the mirror a little, "Think you could try getting down a bit more? I kind of need to make sure nobody follows us."

"Sorry," Emily says, scrunching her unwieldy appendages down as much as she can manage. It's already embarrassing enough how they had to steal a station wagon just to accommodate her added girth, but to be in the way like this only makes her disdain this forced transformation even more. Maybe she'll ask that girl in black for some kind of solution when she next sees her: no more avoiding the situation at hand.

As if arriving to simultaneously add an air of mystique to this night and distract Emily from the dour surroundings, shooting stars begin slowly streaming across the sky. Appearing almost as laser pointers in their sheer, piercing luminosity, their trails seem to burn the night sky for fleeting seconds at a time. One of those natural sights of beauty visible even through the pouring rain and yet, Axel has simpler things on his mind.

"It's too quiet in here," Axel comments, fiddling at the stereo, "I need some rock and roll _badly_."

"What do you think you're doing?" Uina harshly says over a loud blast of static, quickly jabbing the stereo off. Axel reacts with his usual fake Nobody shock at this admittedly unusual act: what's so wrong about a little music to liven things up?

"Come on," Axel says in that prying tone of his, turning the radio right back on and searching through channels of static, "Don't be a square; be a dude."

"Do you _want_ the cops on our-" Uina says as he swats Axel's hand away, a bright flash and loud crash bringing his attention back to the road. It turns out that meteor shower is not exactly keen on people ignoring it in favor of Bon Jovi and has started tearing right through the buildings like paper. White explosions throw cars and asphalt up in the air like confetti and cough up dust clouds of concrete and dirt. Uina swerves to avoid not only the debris of so much destroyed city, but also the sprays of blinding white fluid that each crater is gushing out like extreme blood pressure wounds. Emily and Chou gape in unknowable horror while Axel just kind of gapes, but Uina seems to have a clue just what's going on.

"Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no..." Uina mutters in great irritation, narrowly grazing one bright geyser in spite of his surprisingly good driving. While it turns out this fluid isn't something that can melt the engine block off, it does linger just a little too long even at the breakneck speed of... eighty kilometers an hour at best. That mystery doesn't last too long as the blob starts reforming itself, starting first with a pair of claws digging into the hood and working its way up its arms to its bulbous, pudgy body. Finishing its transformation with a pair of dull purple eyes, it glares inside as it yanks itself back up onto its knees.

"...oh, damn," Axel comments in unfaked but dull surprise, staring back into the creature's eyes as he reaches over and turns the static-blaring radio off. Just as the newly formed Lightside Shimmer releases one hold and raises its clenched claw to the air, Uina hard banks to a side in a desperate attempt to fling it off. Not exactly the smartest thing to do as more flying debris forces him to swerve right back, but either way, it does nothing to loosen the vice-like grip of this offending creature. Scrabbling back up as fast as it can, it trips on its own feet and plants its face right on the windshield.

For the briefest second, Emily finds herself hoping the windshield wipers set at maximum will scrape it off with as much ease as a splattered bug. Of course, since this is just a normal station wagon rather than an excessively reinforced military vehicle, said wiper just harmlessly pinches the Shimmer's cheek and wedges in place. The creature almost looks insulted as it reaches over and snaps the cheap plastic thing right off, flinging it away with a dismissive gesture. With fire in its eyes and a tremble in its claw, it raises its fist back up in the air and-

Uina stomps the brake right at this zenith, but all it does is throw the creature in an arc and slam it across the hood with a loud clang. Still, the Shimmer pushes itself right back up even as Uina stomps the gas, both of them looking downright enraged now. Another attempted punch through the window is interrupted by another stomp on the brake, but this time, it just sweeps the creature's feet out from under it. Uina doesn't even get enough time to accelerate back up to a decent speed before the Shimmer throws a punch that sends cracks through the thick glass.

"Just... fall _off_ already," Uina commands, stomping the brake once again in time with his emphasis. Emily finally decides to go ahead and take a risk, whipping out a pistol from a thigh holster and lobbing a round over Chou's head towards the Shimmer. While her original aim of the creature's head does not prove true, she does get the next best thing by blasting its clamped hand clean off. The momentum of both the sudden brake and the explosive round launch the Lightside disciple in front of the car, still alive but at least no longer bugging them.

"_Thank you_," Uina dryly remarks, swerving around the prone creature in a rather jarring motion.

"...why didn't you run it over?" Axel unhelpfully asks after a long delay.

"What, and ruin the suspension?" Uina sighs, staring at the building with determination, "I'm an engineer; not a vengeful idiot."

With that minor inconvenience out of the way, it doesn't take much longer for this family vacation to reach the fateful building playing host to their target. As stylish as the glimpse inside made the skyscraper seem, it looks a little outdated and unkempt from this new vantage point: as if that one room was set up as a special event. Then again, the rest of the city has a similar look, so maybe it's just a stylistic choice?

Before Uina gets a chance to crash through the glass lobby as originally planned, one of the shooting stars takes a sizable chunk off the very top of the tower. It's only through sheer luck that the falling steel beams and industrial-strength glass merely crushes the bonnet, the rest of the car crunching a bit as the momentum sends it in the beginning of a forward flip. While everybody else is left miraculously unscathed through the power of seatbelts and airbags, Emily finds herself painfully thrown over her seat and stopped between the front seats by her awkward wingspan. Well, at least she's still alive...

"Sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Sterling," Uina sarcastically comments, ripping through the airbags with his baton apparently set to blowtorch. After a futile attempt to open his crunched door, he settles for sweeping the last bit of safety glass from his window and crawling out. Axel takes the more direct path of summoning his chakrams and slicing in an effortless vertical rectangle, kicking the thin plastic and aluminum door right off. Luckily for the less-impressive duo of Emily and Chou, they manage to crawl out through one of the doors. Well, that makes two car crashes Emily has survived.

_We're still alive. Come on in._

"'Kiko'," Uina cynically starts, turning to face Emily, "Think you could ask-"

"She said to come in," Emily cuts off, staring at the gash eighty or so stories up this skyscraper. It looks like they're going to have to fight quite a bit more than some hired thugs and an eternally PMS-afflicted gemstone sorceress because those glowing packets of bright light are definitely not from the electrical system. Dripping globs of shining ink form into Shimmers and Lumines as they fall, coming to life and subsequently splattering across the pavement because they just weren't built to survive terminal velocity. A morbid shower that becomes less amusing as one such Lumine crushes the remainder of the station wagon with its useless body.

"Let's _go!_" Uina quickly orders, leaping over the wreckage and dashing towards the door before anyone else can even flinch. Axel decides to cut through his section of wreckage and Emily gives Chou a much needed boost by grabbing her and leaping over the debris with an involuntary flap of her wings. Uina shows that he genuinely is a team player by helpfully blasting falling Lightside bodies from the sky, keeping the three others safe as they rush to catch up. Axel helpfully saves the trouble of lockpicking the front doors by throwing his chakrams at the center, shoulder bashing through with little effort. Luck saves the group once again as some huge, unidentified Heartless crashes to the ground behind them, missing so narrowly as to knock one of Emily's sandals off mid-stride.

"What a rush..." Axel comments in his Nobody monotone, shaking the water off and resummoning his chakrams with a graceful sweep of his arms.

"Okay, then..." Uina sighs, casually striding towards the elevator, "I'd rather take the stairs in this weather, but eighty floors is a bit much..."

Everybody follows as Uina thumbs the button, a shrill ding ringing out as the doors slide open. As if waiting on cue, the power to the whole building shuts off in a cascading series of darkened lights. The lobby goes pitch black save for a dim light from outside, everybody standing silent for a few awkward seconds before a low, distant rumble barely makes itself heard. One of those Lightside meteors must have found its way to the power plant.

"Typical," Uina dryly comments, lighting up the room with his baton set on road-flare mode, "I hope you've all kept up your cardio because-"

The loud clangs of generators starting cut off Uina, a long line of red fluorescent lights casting the room in a dull glow. The elevator doors close right back up after a second, the nearby screens flashing some rather dire text in a heavy bold font:

EMERGENCY POWER MODE - PLEASE USE STAIRS

"Great," Uina cynically remarks, flicking his baton back to its normal self, "Just... incredible... well, who are we to defy orders from a flashing infographic? Up we go."

With the absolutely exciting task of climbing eighty floors of skyscraper stairs in dim red light ahead of them, Uina bursts through the door to find pretty much exactly that. The would-be surgical strike assassination team settles into a repetitive jog up the stairs at a rate of about four steps a second, twisting around the square-shaped shaft in total monotony. Twenty stories, forty stories, fifty stories, fifty five, fifty six...

Lasting way longer than Emily could have imagined but still proving herself frail in the end, Chou finally collapses somewhere between the 60th and 61st floors. Emily almost trips over the gasping, heaving Feylinus, Uina and Axel only stopping after two more flights turn them to face the pair.

"Oh, great," Uina cynically remarks, taking this opportunity to take a breather as well, "Come on, Chou: you volunteered to come. It's not like I was yanking your arm."

"I'm sorry," Chou says through her gasps, "I thought... I was o... kay, but... I'm sorry..."

"'Kiko'," Uina sarcastically opens, "Ask your best friend what's going on up there."

_Pete ran and the rapist is still alive. Hurry._

"Pete flaked out," Emily states, walking in front of Chou and kneeling down, "We need to hurry, so hop on."

"...okay," Chou says, staggering back up and falling back down upon Emily's back. As if trying to make this as unpleasant as possible, she digs her fingers into the sensitive upper stalks and her knees bend into the wings enough to cause cramps, but what can she do? They've already wasted a lot of time and there's no telling how long their target is going to stay in this compromised building.

"Are you guys read-" Uina attempts, cut off once again by a loud crash from above. Smashing through the walls of the eightieth floor like so much cheap plaster is an unusually gigantic Lightside Heartless, its back-first trajectory suggesting it just lost a fight with somebody ridiculously strong. Appearing as some kind of cross between a pudgy child and tarantula, it grabs and snaps off chunks of stairways as it falls down the center of the shaft towards the group.

"Oh, crap..." Uina mutters as he watches in subdued terror, shifting around in baffled anticipation. Luckily, while the slamming and flailing does graze by just a little too close for comfort, outside of a few inconvenient bits of stairway being torn off, the Lightside fails to so much as muss the hair of anybody. Everybody yanks their heads down to watch the vanquished creature finish its eighty floor shortcut... and immediately regret it as it explodes in a bright, blinding flash; the kind made worse by their eyes adapted to the dim red light all around.

"God _dammit!_" Uina yelps in pain, accompanied by the sound of about 180 pounds of cloth-covered flesh and bone smacking against the stairs. Emily manages to avoid also collapsing through sheer force of balance and will, rubbing and blinking her eyes over and over until the white sheet over her vision turns to green and breaks apart. Well, that could have gone worse...

_I think Pete just sent a prime down your way. Be careful._

"Thanks for the heads up..." Emily mutters with a slow shake of her head, looking back up to the two men. It's kind of funny how Axel, always trying way too hard to appear as some fount of passion, looks so completely braindead and mute in the most pressing situations. Obviously, it's because he doesn't have the luxury of pretending to be lively when anything important is at stake, but it still feels like he has inappropriate reactions to everything going on around him. So goes the life of a Nobody... wait, didn't Anna say Pete ran... whatever. Best not to think too hard about it.

"I can't wait to see what else goes wrong," Uina dryly comments, looking down at the gap in front of the two girls, "Think you'll make it across okay?"

"I should be okay," Emily confirms, leaping forward into the five step gap and grabbing at the twisted handrail. With a two-handed pull, she pops right back onto the stairs. Simple. Uina and Axel helpfully wait as Emily and Chou catch up with them, the group reunited for the next eighteen or so floors.

Perhaps it's a sign of everybody's weariness that it doesn't take any prompting for everybody to keep climbing up these tedious stairs. Step after step, leap after leap, until finally, they reach the coveted eightieth floor. Oddly enough for a corridor smashed apart by a vanquished Heartless, there's absolutely nothing going on in sight. Regardless, it's a good thing this particular climate makes stealth a non-issue on the way out because they're certainly not taking the stairs again.

"I'm okay now," Chou says, mercifully dropping off of Emily's back.

"Okay..." Uina sighs, pulling out his baton with a twirl, "We better hope those twenty minutes don't cost us. Everybody ready?"

"Ready!" Axel confirms in faux-enthusiasm, summoning his chakrams with outstretched arms.

"Ready," Chou confirms, taking out her extending steel staff.

"Ready," Emily confirms, whipping out a pistol.

"Let's get to-" Uina attempts, a loud crash interrupting him once again. Whatever sent that prime flying earlier has come back for an encore, starting off with a bunch of easily dispatched Shimmers that pass right by the holes in the wall. Impressive, certainly, but for every one that gets sent packing, a Lumine or two run in from the other side to take its place. As awestruck as everybody else might be at imagining the fight happening just outside the frame, Uina at least remembers his leadership role.

"What are you all waiting for?" Uina asks, slowly starting down the crudely improvised corridor. As practiced, Axel and Emily cover the sides while Chou keeps an eye out behind. A lopsided diamond where only the front and one side can attack at a range, but still more secure than all eyes forward. Passing Lightside in parallel hallways prove good target practice for Emily's keen sharpshooting skills, but what strikes her as kind of odd is how they still ignore her as they rush their target. Whoever has taken the stage certainly draws quite an audience of adoring fans...

Stepping through the last hole into the fateful hallway, Emily finally gets to confirm that the girl in black isn't lying. Standing knee deep in Lightside with many more hanging off his arms is none other than Pete, still stuck in his human form dubbed 'Basil' but hardly devoid of his brutish strength. Visible under the rugby scrum of tackling creatures is a set of red and blue armor donned hastily over his equally unkempt business suit, topped off with a rhino-horned helmet. Much more imposing is a gigantic blue and black steel hammer that is even bigger and heavier than he is... and he's already one that could stand to get on a treadmill every so often. Unfortunately for him, the hammer looks a lot less impressive when it's held down by four Lumines all huddled together. Things don't look too bright for him...

"Grrrrr..." Pete grumbles as he starts sinking to the ground, his strength starting to fade under so many Lightside, "All of you. Get. **OFF!**"

Drawing upon a hidden strength from within, Pete effortlessly lifts his hammer through the thousands of pounds holding him down and spins it upright in a spray of dislodged Heartless. Before said personal space invaders get a chance to drift out to safety, he slams the hammer down into the ground with a dark blue flash of energy. Everything around him explodes in a cascading crash of shattering hallway and broken Lightside. Emily watches with deer-in-headlights shock as the wave of flung bodies approach, but luckily for everybody present, Axel dashes forward and deflects every last one in the swirling inferno of his chakrams. Impressive, yes, reckless, hell yes, but also draining if Pete's collapse onto his hammer as if it were a walking stick is any indication.

"Huff, huff, huff..." Pete loudly gasps, forcing himself back up onto his feet and proudly gesturing with his hammer, "Nobody, and I do mean _nobody_, messes with the mighty Pete!"

"Nice to see you haven't changed a bit under that new exterior," Uina dryly comments as he slowly claps his hands, carefully approaching the burly man, "I hope you're not as incompetent working alongside us as you were against us."

"I got some good licks in and you know it!" Pete corrects in a futile attempt to preserve his dignity, lowering the business end of his hammer as the others stop just in front of him. Kind of funny to see this five-strong group all standing aimlessly in a crater in the middle of this four way intersection, but things could be worse. The heavy wind blowing through the halls don't seem too promising for their safety.

"Ja... Anna said you ran," Emily gets out of the way, "What happened?"

"All hell broke loose!" Pete defensively states, his voice losing its proud triumph in a hurry, "Everybody shooting everybody else and Mint... wench is _terrifying_. She just don't _care_ who she kills and she deflects bullets. _Bullets!_ Sod _that!_ I'm outta here!"

"What about the money?" Uina half-heartedly calls out as Pete starts running the wrong way to salvation. For someone so heavy, he proves surprisingly fast; almost sounds like a completely lock-step cavalry echoing through the empty hallway.

"Keep i-" Pete shouts out behind his shoulder, his voice abruptly stolen by a huge gust of wind. As if this snafu just couldn't possibly wait to get worse, the double doors facing the big oaf slam open to reveal half a dozen blue and white tech troopers with rifles at the ready. With their imposing capes audibly fluttering in the wind and soft glows starting to warm up their weaponry, there's really only one reaction anybody could possibly have.

"Oh, sh-" Pete attempts as he grinds to a halt, interrupted by the most extreme form of censorship possible: a hot bolt of weaponized plasma through the head. Axel proves quite fast in moving in to deflect the streaming volley as everybody else ducks down another hallway, but unfortunately, a bolt bursts through Uina's padded combat vest and chars the side of his chest. He's only lucky that Emily, in her rush to get out of harm's way, ended up accidentally tackling him to safety with a surprisingly clumsy fall bringing both to the ground.

"A little late to take the shot for me," Uina somberly wheezes through his gritted teeth and involuntary groan, his voice nearly drowned out by the distancing screeches and crashes of the ensuing battle, "But thank you."

"Er... no problem," Emily shrugs, getting up on her knees and pulling Uina up against the wall, "How bad is it?"

"My lung's fried, I can't move my right side, and I'm already feeling cold," Uina mutters, ash coming out with every breath, "The future isn't looking so bright for me..."

"You're going to be just fine," Emily helpfully reassures, "I mean... you _have_ to be. If my visions are right, none of this could have ever happened if you hadn't brought me into this universe."

"I always thought your visions were bunk," Uina gloomily chuckles, apparently confused by this statement. Lucky for him, his salvation just happens to be staring him right in the face: Chou. Perhaps it's a good thing she volunteered to come along after all and while poor old Pete is probably beyond help, she can at least keep the important people alive.

"Chou, h-" Emily attempts.

"No," Uina quickly interrupts, weakly pushing Chou back as she moves in. So, wait: even though she could easily fix everything right there, Uina would rather die on the floor of this grubby building and leave his companions behind to fight a war on three fronts? Axel might be doing a decent job holding back the blue and white menace, but the approaching crashes don't paint a very good aural picture... and what about the escape? They don't exactly have the keys to his space ship...

"...why no-" Emily attempts.

"I never went through... that... Feylinus induction crap," Uina explains, "And I never wanted to, but no matter. You need me awake to remote pilot the ship here, so just..."

"...yes?" Emily asks, a surge of genuine worry going through her as Uina's eyes glaze over. How the hell is she supposed to get through this apparently doomed mission without his leadership? Without his remote control of the ship? They're just completely and totally f-

"Chou," Uina continues after a worrying pause, blinking his eyes back to normal. "Keep me stimmed on painkillers and get me to a window. 'Kiko'... go finish the mission."

"But-" Emily attempts again.

"Axel's got it under control," Uina says, shoving Emily away, "Just... go, already."

"Okay..." Emily apprehensively says, slowly backing away from the deeply wounded man. Truth be told, she's not quite sure where she should be going in the first place. Could it be-

"Thataway," Uina helpfully points, even the act of keeping his finger up tiring him out. It appears their rendezvous with Pete was taking them the wrong way because now, Emily has to brave the crossfire to a set of double doors not too far from the series of holes in the walls. To think that they were that close to their target and never even realized it...

With Axel now backed into the intersection and looking quite fatigued by his whirlwind of deflection, Emily gulps down a big breath and dashes towards him. With her figure firmly in mind, she leaps across the wild stream of energy bolts with wings crossed around her chest. It's only by some kind of miracle that she passes through unscathed: about time something goes right for a change. Rolling off her back and awkwardly thrusting herself onto her feet with a reverse flap of her wings, she wastes no time in drawing both her pistols and shoulder-bashing right through the double doors.

While Emily was never quite sure what she expected to face, the sight of this room is just a bit much. Besides the fact that the meteor scooped a huge chunk of it out and left a ton of broken glass and splintered wood of the crushed table all over, there's also a huge pile of dead bodies. Meaningless thugs lie alongside their masters, with about an even split between bullet holes and jagged gashes sealing their fate. Bloody, grisly, and altogether an expected end for the criminal underbelly of the universe.

But who cares about them? The more pressing issue lies in the swarm of Lightside gathered around two corners. In one corner is none other than Anna, completely untouched and making only a token effort to defend against her would-be attackers: the kind of non-effort that blatantly screams 'stalling'. In another corner is Mint, her situation a total opposite of Anna's. With her green dress torn to indecency, her body pouring blood from a hundred gashes, and only one lightly-cracked gem left in her bracelet, she lurches around in desperate evasion of a particularly nasty Heartless that cuts through her defenses like paper. In between is none other than Maleficent, completely ignored by the intruders and yet doing absolutely nothing to help either of her so-called disciples. About the only involvement she shows is the faintest trace of a content smirk on her face.

"Oh, hey," Mint wheezes out, ducking under a swipe that yanks out a clump of hair, "You're... new... mind helping me out?"

Wordlessly, Emily raises one of her guns and lobs a round towards the green-clad girl. However, fortunate for Mint and unfortunate for everyone else, the Heartless dashes and shoulder-bashes her flat onto her ass out of the bullet's trajectory completely by mistake. As if trying to complicate the situation even further, the shot catches the creature in the neck and bursts it apart in a spray of viscous white fluid. The blinding monster staggers around aimlessly as it clutches its throat, eventually falling face first into the ground and bursting apart into several dozen liters of dissipating ooze. Well, it certainly went down pretty easy...

"...thank you," Mint says after an uncomfortable pause, picking herself up and ripping shards of glass and metal from her skin, "Little close, but thank you... god, I need a-"

As wordless as before, Emily fires another round at Mint's head lest she lose that all-important element of surprise. Predictably, Mint instinctively throws up a barrier of green crystal, but not so predictably, the bullet actually makes it through. Sure, punching through the crystals knocked it off to a side, but a deep gash against Mint's forehead and a disoriented stagger into a wall prove her defenses fallible. And all this time, Emily thought this sorceress was near-invincible...

"What the f-" Mint shouts as she clutches at the fresh wound, blinking through the pour of blood. With the momentary stun out of the way, Emily unloads both guns at her suddenly vulnerable target. Unfortunately, while that first shot brought a lot of optimism, Mint gets right back in the swing of deflecting the bullets with little effort. The extent of her wounds really show through by her apparent refusal to budge from the wall even with the empty clip, but with the bullets doing absolute jack, Emily doesn't bother reloading just yet. Better to see where this goes...

_Use your knives._

"The _hell_ is your problem?" Mint shouts, shoving herself off the wall into a very tenuous stance. As commanded by that voice in her head, Emily dutifully drops the empty clips, reloads new ones with a slap across her belt, twirls her pistols into their thigh holsters, and draws the knives from just over her behind in two swift, graceful motions. Still, as much as she wants to finish her off and get out of this crumbling tower, she still feels compelled to have one last conversation... at least to ease what should be a nagging conscience.

"You really don't know who I am?" Emily asks, vaguely insulted. How the hell can she not remember? She was only sent by Anna to pick her up not any more than two weeks ago...

"...oh, yeah," Mint says, turning to face the girl in black, "Hey, Anna: your girlfriend is here. Tell he-"

"No," Emily asserts, kicking past a particularly grim corpse, "You mutilate my friends and you don't even _care?_"

"Why should my apprentice care what happens to such a _weak_ little girl?" Maleficent comments with a scoff, tapping her sceptre against the ground with the emphasis. In all her single-minded desire to dispatch that boorish girl, she forgot all about the real threat just off to the side. Kind of an uncomfortable situation: after all, even if Maleficent doesn't exactly show much compassion, she probably would not take the death of her apprentice so well. It's almost certain Emily is going to have to kill both... although the fact that Maleficent has done nothing even as both a Heartless and a lucky bullet nearly manage to kill Mint might be a good sign that-

_Ignore Maleficent. Kill the rapist._

"Hey, Anna!" Mint shouts across the room, "Your bee-eff-eff is trying to kill me."

"Busy right now!" Anna cheerfully responds with a knowing smirk, continuing her phoned-in performance against the couple of remaining Shimmers. She doesn't look like she's trying: even the Heartless seem bored of her.

"You're some friggin' goddess or something," Mint harshly shouts back, "Get your scrawny ass in gear, kill that crap, and help me, dammit!"

"You really don't have anything to say for yourself?" Emily asks in disbelief. She always thought that Mint at least knew she was doing some very, very bad things, but to act so blissfully unaware of them? There's no way she's this good an actress: it must be genuine.

"_You're_ the one that chose to join Mickey's private army," Maleficent cuts in, still not taking any direct action, "Despite what the mouse promised you, the universe will never be a playground of happiness and rainbows. It will always be a festering boil where nobody is safe until somebody, _anybody_ takes it over and cleans it up. Why should it not be me?"

"Mint," Emily says sternly, completely disregarding that monstrous woman, "I challenge you to a duel."

"...what?" Mint says, glancing over at Anna for a second and resuming in a loud voice, "Don't do this to me. I made a promise and I don't want to-"

"My name is Emily Tennenbaum," Emily continues, pointing at Mint with one her knives, "And I challenge you to a duel."

The air almost seems to hang a little with that bold statement out in the open, the impact sinking into everybody present... what little there is. Maleficent makes some kind of light scoffing noise and Anna turns to face Emily and a rather blank Mint. She has the look of a person that is desperately searching within her clogged noggin for the memory sparked within... a look that fits with Julia's claims. After about twenty seconds of arrhythmic blinking, Mint suddenly bursts into this uproarious laughter: completely hysterical and barely able to support her own weight. What the hell?

"I remember you!" Mint shouts through the chuckles, her voice full of unbridled discovery and malicious glee, "Holy crap, I remember you! I can't believe it!"

"...the hell are you talk-" Emily attempts, staring cockeyed at the insane-sounding blonde girl and unwittingly lowering her weapon.

"You used to be my favorite target!" Mint continues enthusiastically, still laughing hard between sentences, "Always so serious all the god damn time and trying _so_ hard to hide your geekiness! 'No, you can't read my poker face!' God _damn_, it was funny breaking that wall and making you cry!"

"...I don't kn-" Emily attempts, her blade arm now hanging limp as other things consume her mind.

"Remember that time I replaced your Ritalin with sleeping pills?" Mint asks, swerving to a side and barely catching herself with a rapid series of steps.

"That was _you?_" Emily asks in surprise, that painful, repressed memory flowing right back up, "I spent _weeks_ talking with the drug counselor and he wouldn't believe m-"

"Wait..." Mint interrupts with a stop-sign hand, her voice momentarily calm, "They thought you were _tripping_? _You?_"

"Yes!" Emily harshly shouts back, rage starting to fill her to the brim. Mint falls right back into the wall as she resumes her hysterical laughter, her spasming hard enough to dribble blood into the air. It takes all of Emily's restraint not to lunge at her: not only does she absolutely need to know who this person really is, but she also remembers that Mint uses extensive misdirection, feints, and opportunity. Better to see where this goes... and Anna seems to agree with her, effortlessly sweeping back all but two Shimmers in one fell swoop. She desummons her spear and holds both of the closest back by their foreheads as they futilely swing away, the other Heartless inexplicably halting their assault as they tenaciously circle around her.

"And I just wanted to see you drool in class!" Mint finally gets out after a minute of disquieting laughter, "It works on so many levels!"

Mint continues her patience-testing laughter at Emily's expense, sliding down the wall with a bloody stain as she suddenly starts coughing up a storm. She grimaces with this weird expression of pain and delirium as she alternates between the two, finally falling to a side as she clutches her stomach. In spite of Mint's complete lack of moral character, the fact that someone as on-point as her can break down like this at Emily's misery really does hurt her feelings. It brings to mind just how pitiful she must have been back in that old universe. Just the very thought of it makes her lip quiver and mists her eyes...

"You aren't going to cry, are you?" Mint gets through in between some laugh-coughs, tears of a different kind starting to form in her eyes, "Oh, god! It hurts so good!"

_Now's your chance._

With a blink that sprinkles tears all around, Emily raises both of her blades and leaps right at her target with a flap of her wings. Even as Mint lies bleeding and hacking, she still manages to summon a solid wall of crystal just in time to stop the blades mere centimeters from her head. Emily struggles to try and shove through the barrier, but just as the green quartz starts to give way, Mint follows up by punching her away with a giant crystal fist. As Emily gets launched into a hard smack against the opposing wall, Mint picks herself right back up with nary a laugh or cough escaping her mouth.

"I'm not finished yet!" Mint continues in a mock-annoyed voice, lightly coughing with those words, "I was so glad when you came to the same high school as me! Two years and none of the other short bus kids were _nearly_ as much fun as you! Too much humor."

"Your malicious passion is wearing thin," Maleficent dryly comments, tapping her sceptre once with an impatient thud, "Stop dawdling."

"Oh, _come on_," Mint hastily retorts, turning away from a now-standing, relatively calmed down Emily, "The mission's failed. Nothing left to do here but have some fun! I'll catch up with you."

"Don't overextend yourself," Maleficent states with derision, taking a few steps back into the shadows.

"Pushy, pushy..." Mint sighs, getting back in the groove, "I'll admit, I was a little sad when you disappeared. Not very, but a little. I thought maybe you wimped out and killed yourself like that MySpace girl, but to think you ended up here! Your friend was so worried and beating her up just wasn't the same."

With that statement laid bare, Anna unwittingly digs her fingers straight into the skull of one of her held Shimmers, the creature going limp for a second before dissolving into nothingness. That act seems to catch Mint's attention at the corner of her eyes, a smirk creeping onto her mouth. With a loud puff of air, Mint continues her nasty stare straight into Emily's eyes.

"Remember that time I got a guy to call your place and tell your parents that his condom broke the night before?" Mint asks with an unusual focus, appearing to be completely drained of laughs.

"...no?" Emily responds, confused. While this is just as cruel and tasteless as anything else she has done, she seriously can't remember this at all. No way she could have possibly buried something like that deep down, either. It does make her shiver imagining her parents confronting her about something like that, though...

"...oh, yeah," Mint says, putting on her best imitation male voice, "'If you ever call us again, I'm calling the police.' I guess even _he_ knew you were too sexless a loser to believe it... humm... oh, yeah! Oh, hell yeah! How the hell did I _not_ think of this right away?

"...wha-" Emily attempts.

"Remember that time I sent everybody your shower photos?" Mint asks in as loud and forceful a voice as possible.

"...oh, god..." Emily shudders as she goes completely cold with that thought, tears overflowing against her will. Memories of all that taunting, jeering, shunning, and all around alienation bash through her head like a car through a crowded mall. That single picture destroyed any hope she ever had of a normal high school life: completely shattered with just one mass e-mail not even two megabytes large. The corners of Mint's lips slowly arch upwards as she squints her eyes, her malicious glee surpassing even Emily's grief-stricken sobbing.

"You should be _proud_ you had such a completely _perfect_ picture!" Mint sarcastically declares, glancing around the room suspiciously, "Absolutely _marvelous!_ I can't even _decide_ what was best: all those ugly moles, the blood dribbling down your leg, or that your piss-ugly anorexic figure and tiny boobs _totally_ made you look like a boy!"

"I! AM! NOT! **ANOREXIC!**" Emily shouts in further anguish as she desperately tries to hold herself back, another layer of severe adult scrutiny crushing her already-wracked emotions. She'll never get back all those hours she spent getting lectured by doctors, counselors, and seminar speakers about the terrible shape she was in. All those people moralizing and criticizing her, yet so completely full of their righteous crusade, they wouldn't even listen as she insisted she was following every last one of their diet considerations and then some.

"Bull," Mint dryly comments, "Nobody looks like that without a serious brain problem... OH! I REMEMBER NOW! The absolute _best_ part was getting the two gym teachers convicted of child pornography! Yeah, how's _that_ for proper posture, huh? Hope _your_ posture is good as you get pounded in Club Fed! That will show _you_ for questioning my hundred-fifty a year personal trai-"

"RRR-**AHHHJH!**" Emily shouts as she loses all control, sloppily leaping straight at Mint with both knives drawn. There is absolutely nothing she wants more now than to rip and tear that godawful, terrible harlot limb from limb. She won't be satisfied until she utterly destroys this smug trollop so completely and thoroughly, not even a sponge could pick her up. She wants to go absolutely Biblical on her ass and not the watered down New Testament, either. Talking about great flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, plague of locusts, God needs anger management level of sheer, unbridled wrath. Forced as she is into this form, she's going to play the angel of death tonight.

Yet, in all of that righteous anger, Mint rolls underneath the vengeful lunge with little effort. Emily doesn't even get a chance to finish her missed thrust before taking a blunt, heavy object in the back that slams her against the blood-stained wall. To think that even through all her wounds, Mint is still so pliant and agile...

"Bloody _hello!_" Mint shouts with glee, "Hey, James! I think I pissed your lover off!"

With another delirious battle cry, Emily kicks right off the wall and swoops back at her target. Mint evades underneath once again and punctures Emily right through a wing with a sudden spike, but it's not enough. Oh, no. Rather than retreat for even a second, Emily unflinchingly swings her body around on this pike and drives her daggers towards her stunned target. Fast and effortless as Mint might be in deflecting supersonic rounds, she barely redirects enough crystal to block one blade and fails to stop the other from plunging deep into her left shoulder.

"Aiick!" escapes a yelp in an unusually high pitch from Mint's mouth, her body spasming with a big flop. Her concentration broken and gemstone defense compromised, the other blade plunges even deeper into her other shoulder. With the green pike dissipating and Emily's force too tight to reverse, Mint makes a rather desperate escape by ramming her attacker away with a sloppy crystal battering ram. Another loud groan escapes her mouth as the knives sheer blunt-side-first right through her sinew, spraying a shocking amount of blood even with all that has been shed already.

Emily finds herself launched into a pile of broken glass, but even as so many shards dig into her limp wings, the boiling rage drown out all that sensory noise in favor of a single-minded obsession with retribution. There must be something at least a little frightening about her fierce determination because even Anna looks a tad creeped out: enough to allow all the nearby Heartless to pile on top of her and futilely punch and claw away to no avail. Why does she even bother with holding them off if they can't hurt her?

"Hey, James!" Mint shouts to the side, her voice wavering, "Better stop us because this is _serious_."

Emily rushes back at Mint during her momentary distraction, blades ever at the ready. The green-clad girl tries to catch her attacker with a hasty volley of spikes, but the wounds must be catching up with her because what comes out is pretty pathetic. Even though Emily slams chest-first into this shield, the jagged edges all crumble without so much as getting past her cloth outfit, magical as it may be. Still, Mint proves that she lives right there in the moment because with less than a centimeter to spare, she smacks both of the blades away from her heart and out of Emily's hands.

It doesn't really buy her much in the way of time because with so much momentum in her rush, Emily slams right through Mint. They both crash down onto the ground, the green-clad girl pinned underneath so much winged weight. All that force knocks the wind out of Mint, spraying blood across her attacker's face, but Emily doesn't care. All she cares about now is bringing the karma upon this terrible shrew and inflicting ten times the pain and misery upon her as she has upon others in her miserable lifetime. It is her prerogative: her divine right.

Unwilling to simply cap the detestable woman where she lies and set her free so easily, Emily grips her fists and starts utterly wailing upon her target. Punch after punch shatter through the ever-weakening crystal apparitions, each blow knocking Mint's head against the ground in a splatter of blood. Her once blonde hair goes past anything vaguely strawberry and straight to scarlet, soaked and filthy from pore to end. Her eyes seem to glaze over for short millisecond bursts with each concussive blow: a glaze inverse to the diminishing returns of her futile crystal.

Still, even as she takes hits that should render her retarded, she's ever looking for some kind of escape. In particular, the bloated corpse of that overdressed mafioso about half the room away seems to hold some kind of fascination. Something about the fat fingers and all those glittering gems muddied by so much blood. Her intention becomes clear as a meter-wide, urchin-like ball of spikes shoot out from a green ring, severing the fingers and clattering the other jewels all around. She bounces the ring towards her with more sharp puffs, but even as this other gem produces way better results for whatever bizarre reason, one punch too many finally brings her down for the count.

It's only with Mint limp and unrecognizable under her broken face that Emily finally catches ahold of herself. What the hell has she been doing these past several minutes? How could she ever degenerate into such barbarism so quickly with such a blatant provocation? She's supposed to be a professional: not an 'overtrained thug' as Julia once called her. It must be utterly pathetic to the ever-watchful eyes of both Anna and Maleficent to see how she has completely soaked herself in the blood of this enemy... still, even if she lost herself to anger, that could never excuse what Mint has done. Never. No retribution could ever be too great.

"...no apolog-" Emily mutters, interrupted by a deafening noise and sudden shock. Everything short of her sight comes to a screeching halt, time itself seeming to bend inwards around her as the sound dies down. Confused and oddly stiff in all her joints, she glances around with her eyes at the ruined room to try to find the source. It cannot be either Maleficent or Anna as both look just as blank as ever. What could it be?

It's only as Emily's head nods forward under the gravity that she catches a glimpse of Mint struggling to keep her head up and her torn arm barely lifted above shoulder level. Held awkwardly upside-down with pinky on the trigger is one of Emily's guns, still billowing smoke from the barrel. Oh, sh-

Another loud bang pierces Emily's dulled hearing as Mint pulls the trigger once again, the shock of this particular bullet knocking her backwards in a painless but paralyzed slow motion. The red emergency lights take on this weird orange hue as they scrape across her vision, trailing like thin paint and leaving her sight tinted. She neither hears nor feels herself smack on the floor, her only indication coming from a pair of bobs to her vision. After what feels like an eternity of this shocked suspension of time, everything seems to snap right back to the present with the jarring force of a car crash.

"So vulgar..." Mint sighs with a slur, kicking Emily off to a side facing Anna, "G-guns unclean. Hate i-it..."

Struggling to pick herself up off the ground, Mint trips over her own torn, disobedient arms and tumbles across the glassy floor. Even after she endured even more punishment than any reasonable human should be able to survive, she still shows so much will to live as to crawl over all the jagged edges and the drenched corpses of so many fallen thugs towards that shining green ring of hope. Kind of a pathetic looking wretch of a person and she finally loses her momentum just short of her target, but after a few hopeful seconds of what seems like her final resting place, the gem puffs up once more and bounces into her open palm. How disappointing...

With the most painful grunt anyone will ever hear, Mint summons forth a huge swathe of crystal around her inert hand and straight into the floor. The glimmering pillar drags her limp body up along with it, turning her to vaguely face towards Anna. With a surprising lunge that drags the attached body behind like a streaming banner, the crystalline structure circles around and purees every last remaining Heartless that the black-winged girl once used as a stalling excuse. She finishes this rather grim dervish with her body propped up on a makeshift crutch in front of Anna, back turned and facing Emily with genuine fear in her bloodied, drooping eyes.

"I l-love you too, Anna," Mint very slowly says, still slurring, "Why di-didn't you h-h-help?"

"My dear Mint," Maleficent coldly says with an amused chuckle, "Did you not demand to fight all your own battles?"

"D-don't you c-c-care about y-your girlfriend?" Mint slurs even more, "H-had to sh-shoot the psycho bi-bi-"

With another wholly desensitizing spray of blood and tissue, a red spear suddenly impales its way right through her torso with what can only be described as reverse suctioning sound. It takes a couple seconds for Emily's eyes to focus and adjust to find that none other than Anna holding the other end of the weapon, right up close and personal behind her unfortunate target.

"Oh, I'm sorry, did I interrupt you?" Anna dryly exhales in a whisper-soft voice into Mint's ear, smiling with the warmth of a mother to a child... wait, what the hell is going on here? If Anna could have just killed Mint on her own, why did she plan this elaborate and incredibly dangerous mission in the first place?

"...wha..." Mint trails off, her eyes glazing over and head bobbing down as her crystal crutch starts to slowly break away. The drooping of the other arm and the gun it holds catches Anna's attention real fast as she quickly yanks the spear up to compensate.

"Oh, no-no-no-no-no-no-no don't drop that: you earned it," Anna just as quickly whispers, reaching around and holding an open palm over the glassy pillar. A wave of distortion pours forth and intermingles with the crystal, the chrysoprase slowly spreading over to the dangling gun and sealing it within Mint's grip like ice. How is that even possible? Mint looks pretty damn incapacitated with a huge red crystal weapon jutting out of her chest...

"I made no order to attack her," Maleficent coldly states, her voice oddly uninterested for someone witnessing a betrayal, "What is the meaning of this treachery?"

"I don't have to tell you _anything_," Anna smugly jeers, smiling with a frown at Maleficent over Mint's shoulder.

"Your impudence is unbecoming of the ancient contract," Maleficent coldly states with authority, tapping her sceptre with a loud snap of glass, "As your mistress, I _command_ you to release and heal my apprentice at once."

Anna gives what has to be the single most quizzical look that anyone has ever given another person: the kind one gives to only the most obvious nonsense. She tilts her head to a side as she casually yanks the spear down with a sickening crunch of ribs cracking. All at once, she desummons the keyblade and allows Mint's limp body to clump useless against the ground, the impact gushing one last breath out of her still lips. She had her second wind and it came up lacking...

"Whoever said I could heal?" Anna smugly asks.

Just as suddenly as anything else, a veritable nova of dark purple light pours out of her chest as she yanks her arms, waist, and head back. A circular, ornamental, runic emblem made of pure light rises through her thick dress and hangs in the air, dark purple electricity arcing between it and Mint's prone body. After a lingering few seconds of this unstable conduction, it all bursts at once into a shower of fine sparks that mist harmlessly throughout the room and vanish into nothingness. Fully liberated from the metaphysical chains that once bound her, Anna stretches as she looks over her deceptively unchanged body. Oh, if only Emily could see Maleficent's reaction...

"So the ancient contract favored my apprentice," Maleficent states with a tone of subdued revelation, "A deception beyond even what I expected of you."

"You never trusted me?" Anna calmly asks in a motherly voice, crossing her arms and propping up her chin, "Can't say I blame you. After all, I only did help hand Radiant Garden over to you on a silver platter all those years ago... surely, one world is far from enough, right? You want the whole thing and not a square less."

"You will rue the day you crossed-" Maleficent attempts in an unusually forced harsh voice.

"Rue!" Anna crassly interrupts, her voice still somehow motherly, "So old-timey and overdone: I love it! What are you going to do to make me start ruing? Should I expect to start ruing some time this week or next? My social calendar is a little full, so some advance notice would be _great_, thank you very much."

"I will see to it your plans do not come to fruition," Maleficent boldly threatens. Anna just smiles at this suggestion as she summons her repurposed keyblade, twirling it around and resting it diagonally behind her back.

"How about we take care of this _right now_?" Anna helpfully suggests, motioning towards herself with her free hand. For a really, really long time, an awkward silence takes hold of this tainted room. Getting sick of her inability to take any part of this action, Emily tries to move to no avail: just stuck lying there, paralyzed and bleeding out as Anna boasts about this and that. What a frustrating way to go out.

"We both know you have nothing," Anna says with an amused chuckle, "Without a blunt instrument to brainwash into servitude, you are nothing more than an old hag: a castaway from Shamayim bent on destroying this universe out of nothing more than petty spite. Your resentment towards me is as meaningless as your threats: in fact, you should be _thanking_ me! The Heartless are growing beyond your wildest dreams and the only person that could ever stop them - yours truly - is leaving this Dodge of a universe behind. You've got front row seats to see both empires fall in a matter of days and when it's all over, your dream will finally come true. You shall be the queen of your own private, dead universe: just as you've always wanted but never admitted to anyone else. All according to the prophecy."

With that statement laid bare, the room goes back to its awkward silence. Anna wordlessly nudges Mint onto her back, scooping up the gun and stuffing it into a fold of her dress. Casually ignoring the gaped mouth and glazed eyes of the once-proud girl, she steps right over her on the way to Emily: nice to see she hasn't forgotten about her 'childhood friend'. Anna scoops up Emily into her outstretched arms, her strength still a little surprising for somebody so small. Only as she shifts from side to side does Maleficent finally come into view, exposing the black-cloaked sorceress to be... rather blank. All this dire talk and she doesn't even look terribly miffed...

"Nothing is ever so simple," Maleficent ominously states, vanishing in a puff of black smoke. Typical Maleficent: all talk, no action, and only the vaguest motives to guide her. To think she ever got as far as she did in her grandiose plans to conquer the universe... or destroy it, if Anna is to be believed. Speaking of whom, she doesn't exactly show too much care for Emily as she roots through her pockets, pulling out a PDA and awkwardly tapping through the screens. Only upon reaching some end point with a victory chime and tossing aside the chunk of circuitry does she finally do something to acknowledge Emily as a person.

"Thank you," Anna whispers with a quick kiss on Emily's cheek, turning to face the wide open canvas that meteor cut out. In a reversal of everything the normal Heartless are known for, this invasion coats the world not in black or even white, but green. A patchwork sky of stark night and an artificial light-blue fight each other for dominance, the latter spreading as a thick rainforest engulfs anything and everything in its path. Buildings collapse, panicked people burst apart into fresh Lightside Heartless, and a pool of silvery liquid shooting a pillar of blinding light to the sky forms dozens of kilometers away.

"Oh, no..." Anna quietly mutters, still so inexpressive even when faced with... whatever the reverse of an apocalypse would be. Descending down from outer space is a gigantic bipedal creature made of what appears to be the purest mercury. It reflects everything all around it with only the utmost perfection, the curves and bends of its immaculate, feminine form distorting the images like funhouse mirrors. Upon landing within the pool, the liquid shoots up its skin and hardens into a blinding white shell. Now standing on the lush ground and towering as tall as any skyscraper, it opens its glowing purple eyes and stares straight at Anna and Emily with a sheer envy that pierces the very soul.

_Mine!_

Just as it starts lumbering towards this last standing building with earthquake tremors, the canvas view gets blocked by salvation in the form of a spaceship hovering down. It's all ready for a quick escape with its loading ramp down and Axel motioning them in with big waves of his arms.

"Hold on," Anna oh-so-helpfully suggests to a paralyzed Emily, slinging her over her shoulders and gripping her tightly. As Anna dashes and leaps out of the building, Emily catches one last glimpse of Mint. Even after so many brutal punches to the head, even after having most of her internal organs spilled out by an impaling spear, even after the ancient contract surrendered its hold on her, it seems she still... just... isn't... quite... dead yet. As the space ship flies away and leaves her there to be consumed by the all-devouring light, her lips twitch and the faintest sound pierces through the harsh gales and deafening tremors.

_How?_


	84. Into the White

Once again on Uina's ship. Back in the stars, back in action, and with a full tank of gas, zipping along to that fateful beyond. With phase one of Anna's big plan officially finished, there comes a phase two and three, of course: pick up Sora and Riku, head to the world of Kingdom Hearts. Simple, right?

But then again, it very well may not turn out as such if this upcoming discussion goes where Emily expects. Sora is way too optimistic to ever consider fleeing the universe, dying as it may be. And why should he? This is where all his stuff is, after all. Going beyond that, though, nobody can really expect him to so easily trust such a doubtful figure asking for nothing short of the destruction of a universal cornerstone and claiming that such an act could ever turn out well. If the vague reports are to be believed, Sora knows exactly how tricky Kingdom Hearts truly is and would never agree to such a plan: not even if King Mickey himself proposed it.

There is a more pressing matter at hand, though: Emily's form. Despite Anna's implication that she can't heal others, it turned out to be a bald-faced lie: not like Maleficent deserves the truth, anyway. Even though Emily was pretty banged up to say the least, all it took was a plucking of embedded bullets and a wave of the hand to patch her up good as new... or repurposed, anyway. Leaving her so-called 'best friend' behind on this ship en route to pick up Sora and Riku while she gallivants across the Corridors of Darkness, it's only now that Anna comes back to the break room after a couple days of disheartening nothingness.

"Welcome back," Emily cynically drawls as Anna nonchalantly strolls in. She certainly doesn't look like she was wasting time at amusement parks or video arcades: in fact, for somebody so inconsistent and hard to read, she almost seems to look genuinely stressed. Something must be up if she can't be bothered to respond to her 'best friend' as she fiddles with a nearby computer terminal. Screens of maps and charts flash across, with no real rhyme or rhythm to their meaning.

"...I said 'welcome back'," Emily repeats, a bit more direct and forceful this time. She even stands up for it this time.

"Hello," Anna says, not looking away from her oh-so-fascinating cartography, "Sorry. I just have a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it. You know how it is."

"Do what?" Emily pries, unsure of which confrontation should come first. Should she ask about the form or about that little discussion she had with Maleficent?

"Well..." Anna says, putting in the finishing taps on the computer, "We have some... we... I have to plan our approach. This ritual is really specific and as per the prophecy, the Heartless will overtake the universe... sometime tomorrow, in fact. If all of us are to get back to good old Mundane Eurasian Earth, we need to be completely on point and ready to do some serious damage."

"...I want my old self back," Emily decides to get out of the way, figuring that she should include everybody else in the other discussion: they have a right to know. Anna pauses with those words, slowly turning around with just the slightest trace of a hurt expression on her face. Her lips and cheeks might hold their own, but her eyes betray her. It's always the eyes.

"Do you mean your blue-haired 'old self' or your old-old self?" Anna asks, her voice very doubtful but rather disconnected. It almost sounds as if she's towing the line one sentence in the future. This is not going to end the way Emily hopes; not at all.

"I don't care," Emily asserts, crouching forward and spreading her wings, "I want these gone."

"Why?" Anna asks defensively, flexing her own pair in response.

"They get in the way and I don't need to fly," Emily answers, her voice confident as can be.

"But they're _beautiful_," Anna compliments in complete and total honesty, her voice dreamily wisping through the air, "There's nothing as elegant, majestic, and wonderful as a pair of big, bountiful wings, lined with only the finest plumage and softly bristling with every move. Nothing feels so completely unleashed as the wind beneath your wings carrying you free of all the bonds of gravity. No single icon carries as much weight in emotional potency and regardless whether it be of awe or envy, others can only look upon you as their superior. Why would you ever wish to throw away such pure magnificence in favor of a life mundane?"

"...because that's all crap?" Emily cuts to the chase, "I don't _want_ to be worshiped on some kind of ivory pedestal. I just want to be respected and appreciated for who I am and what I have to offer to everybody as my own person: not as some friggin' construct of religion."

"Touching," Anna quips, "If you just want to be respected and appreciated for who you are, why can't you be respected and appreciated for who you are right now?"

"Because," Emily starts, convinced Anna tuned out somewhere there, "Who I am... _what_ I am right now is not the real me. It's some sham that you or that seraph or somebody else _forced_ on me. I had no say in any of it and I would _never_ have accepted this. Not ever. I was fine just the way I was."

"...ha," Anna forces out, "Even you don't believe that. Maybe you can get the words to come out, but they don't mean anything more to you than if you were thanking a store clerk. Don't you remember back in high school how you always lamented who you were and wished to be something else? Haven't you spent most of your time in this universe looking for some kind of magical leg-up on the competition just to get into Riku's pants? You're not fine just the way you are: you _always_ want something more."

"But I've changed!" Emily asserts.

"You haven't changed," Anna retorts, solemnly shaking her head, "It's just not in you to ever be happy no matter your situation. You're just too _sharp_ to ever stop thinking about how your life is and how you could be so much better if things could only be changed. Happiness is for the kind of dull, mindless people that watch _American Idol_, read Stephanie Meyer, and buy all the latest Rihanna CDs because that's what society _tells_ them they should like and when those become passe, society will tell them to buy into a new set of prepackaged junk food. Is _that_ what you want to be? A cultural dumpster?"

"...well, no..." Emily says, confused, "But I don't know what that has to do with anything."

"It has _everything_ to do with everything," Anna responds, "Those that seek out change may not get the change they want, but change will still come their way. Those that don't will have change thrust upon them, whether it be by buying into the mass media or something as mundane as a bad day at work. A life of rigid structure can only exist within an asylum."

"Wait..." Emily counters, thoroughly baffled, "So is change good or bad?"

"Change is change," Anna unhelpfully offers, "The Lightside Heartless are changing this universe as we speak. Who's to say their change is good or bad?"

"And if change is inevitable..." Emily says, not wanting to get diverted just yet, "Why are you denying it to me?"

"Because I don't think you've really considered the wonder of us," Anna wistfully continues, gently twirling around with a ballet grace, "You're finally that someone special, someone that shall hold the universe in the palm of her hand... and you _still_ can't be at least a _little_ content?"

"...what the hell are you even-" Emily attempts.

"It also doesn't help that I can't change you back," Anna finally lets out, "It's not within my power."

"...not within your power?" Emily asks, outraged, "You're the most powerful thing I've ever seen! How the hell is it _not_ within your power?"

"The power I was given does not live up to the feats I perform," Anna somberly sighs, "To believe me omnipotent based on what little you know might flatter me, but it couldn't be further from the truth."

"Then what _is_ your power?" Emily asks in frustration.

"Tsk, tsk," Anna chides with a wave of her finger, "Don't you remember what your teachers told you? _Never_ reveal your whole hand of cards."

"That was just about incurable weaknesses..." Emily trails off, "...this conversation is a waste of time, isn't it?"

"Nah," Anna shrugs, "I think we learned a lot about each other and the way the world... universe... multiverse turns. Think about what I told you and how it applies to your life. Once we get home, we're going to be living in some... how to put it... _interesting_ times, so try and relax for the big moment. Everything needs to fall exactly in place if this is going to work."

Emily starts to say something, but after taking such a roundabout path to get absolutely nowhere, she decides against it. Clearly, she's not going to get her way no matter how insistent she is or how far she goes. All this conversation has done is make one thing blatantly, obviously clear: Anna is not Jamie. There is just no way Jamie would ever talk down to her like this. Never. Jamie never shut her out of the loop for completely baffling reasons. She always tried to see the other side and reassure her even as she had to face rants and moaning so far removed from reality as to make any decent person cringe...

...which kind of saddens Emily now that she thinks of it. A comparison of how awful a friend Anna is to her only cements how awful a friend Emily must have been to Jamie. Oh, if only she could go back in time to that not-so-terrible day and tell her how much she really appreciates everything she does. After all, she had quite literally nobody else she could rely upon...

"...I'm sorry," Emily says, looking down at her feet in shame.

"For?" Anna prods.

"Snapping at you that day before I came here," Emily continues, "It wasn't fair of me. After all, you didn't choose to skip out on... the Fall Out Boy concert because you _wanted_ to. I know your grandpa had been in the hospital for a long time and you couldn't tell me that his heart got worse because of... cell phone interference from the MRI. I shouldn't have been so hard on you."

This sudden apology casts another awkward silence over the room as Anna stares blankly into nowhere. It almost seems to shut her down because her arms and wings both go limp to her sides, her head tilting as the most ponderous expression graces her face. Just as her eyes start glazing over, she blinks right back into reality and picks herself back up.

"It's okay," Anna responds with a warm smile and a shrug, "We all have days where the weight of the world makes us lose sight of others within. I forgive you."

Yep, it's official: this is not Jamie. No way she would have let so many wrong details like this slip her by. Whoever this is and whatever her plans, there's no way Emily is going to support her: not with a simple task and certainly not with such a grandiose, vaguely-defined, and balls-up ridiculous plan as her's. She doesn't even have to wait for everybody else to get here: may as well get the inevitable confrontation out of the way right now while she still has the conviction.

"You are not-" Emily attempts, interrupted by the door swinging open. Standing out in the hallway is none other than... everybody else. There's Uina, wrapped in heavy bandages and on a crutch but otherwise surprisingly spry for a man that took a plasma bolt to the chest. Chou is right beside him in her usual pink dress, tagging along in spite of looking baffled and unaffected. Axel brings up the other side in a business casual set of blue shirt and beige khakis, his look of bafflement and unaffection quite understandable given his lack of heart.

But none of them compare to the passion present in the iconic trio of Sora, Riku, and Kairi. Dressed in his black and red puffy outfit, Sora looks as if he has trudged through the bloodiest battlefield and the intense scowl on his bruised, bandaged face speaks of nothing but horror. By comparison, Riku looks positively plush in his tidy jeans and jacket combo, but his piercing gaze isn't any less fierce. Unlike the two boys, Kairi looks rather diminutive in her pink miniskirt dress and with her intense expression not of determination, but of a crippling worry.

"Hello, everyone," Anna cordially greets, her eyes darting over the crowd. Obviously trying to read the climate as everybody shuffles in and takes seats in their two distinct groups at different sides of the room, Chou switching sides to join her best friend Riku. Anna purses her lips as the tension builds around her, looking perplexed by the lack of response. After all, isn't it kind of rude on their part?

"...wow," Anna says as she walks over to a place in between, choosing to stand, "Happy."

"You want me to go or..." Axel offers, his voice unusually serious.

"I'll do it," Uina says, his voice heavy, "So we had a meeting just before we came here."

"Why wasn't I included?" Emily asks. Why do they still feel as though they can't trust her?

"Mental entanglement, my dear 'Kiko'," Uina dismisses, pulling out his PDA, "So Sora is back with us and brings news from the front. You want to tell them?"

"Everything's gone," Sora gloomily states right away, staring blankly into the ground, "I saw Radiant Garden fall before my eyes. Turned into nothing but thick rainforests full of Lightside Heartless and I couldn't stop them. There were too many, too fast, too strong. I saw our friends Leon, Aerith, Cid, all of them, get turned into Heartless before my eyes. They didn't even leave behind their Nobody shells. The whole planet fell less than an hour after the first meteors hit, but I was _spared_. I don't know why, but I was spared and left to rot on that planet of... _fake_ life with _fake_ fruits that I could not eat and _fake_ water I could not drink. It was only by some _miracle_ that Riku found me and got me out even as the Heartless all went _berserk_ trying to kill him."

"The rest of the universe isn't much better," Riku somberly sighs, "The Destiny Islands are gone. Phoenicia, gone, Brighton, gone, Neverland, gone. Even Discord, gone. A passing Daeh Yeo Mar ship told us that every one of both their and blue and white's planets are gone as well just before a swarm of Heartless tore them apart. The Lightside took out every single network node, so if anybody else is still out there, we have no way of reaching them and with so many Heartless everywhere, their odds are abysmal. We truly _are_ the last people left in this green-covered universe. It's just as Yen Sid told us..."

"Thank you, 'Kiko'," Sora sarcastically states, looking at her from the corner of his eyes, "You're a real hel-"

"Hey!" Anna cuts in defensively with a wave of her arm, Sora casting a fierce stare upon her, "She didn't _want_ to bring about the apocalypse. She's just as much a pawn in this disaster as you and Riku were three years ago."

"Gentlemen, please!" Uina interrupts as quickly as possible, "Who cares _how_ we got into this situation? We're only going to get out of it if we stick together."

"So you see that we must go forward with my plan?" Anna asks hopefully.

"I looked over the details," Uina responds, tapping stuff into his PDA, "While I can go along with the intended results, on the surface, your plan sounds awful. Completely, incredibly, utterly reckless, insane, and flat-out _ridiculous_... and it will _work_. I ran the numbers and god _damn_, it will work. I couldn't _believe_ it."

"See?" Anna declares triumphantly, starting towards the computer, "So we-"

"Not so fast," Sora cuts in, "There _has_ to be a way to save the universe. Just _have_ to be a way. I _refuse_ to believe all we can do is _run_ and leave the universe to _rot_."

"What universe?" Anna asks dryly, "Everyone's _dead_, Sora. _Everyone_. You even said as much. Lightside consume _everything_ about a person and _nothing_ is going to bring any of them back."

"We're going to Kingdom Hearts, right?" Sora asks, his voice not entirely confident, "I could just make another wish..."

That suggestion suddenly draws quite a lot of stunned interest upon Sora, Kairi audibly gasping. While Uina casts a critical eye upon the brown-haired boy and Axel fakes the same, Anna and Riku instead cast doubtful looks upon him. Even Sora doesn't seem terribly confident in himself. Emily doesn't really know how she should react because, well, she doesn't know what exactly happened that day Sora got a wish. All she knows is that it apparently screwed up a ton of the universe... even more than it already is and it took a year to fix it all. Oh, if only her nearly-faded memories of the games helped at all...

"...what, specifically, are you planning?" Uina finally breaks.

"I wished for every world to be restored last time, right?" Sora helpfully recaps, Axel flinching at the mention, "What if we wish for the Heartless to stop existing and give back everything they ever took?"

"You can't be serious..." Uina responds.

"A wish like that?" Anna says doubtfully, smirking a little in spite of herself, "Why, you would have to rewrite the very fabric of reality itself..."

"Can't fault you for not thinking big..." Axel uncomfortably comments.

"Come on..." Sora continues, looking nervous under all the scrutiny, "I don't see how it can be any worse than Jamie's plan."

"Do you even understand the _scale_ of what you want to do?" Anna harshly criticizes, "You're talking about undoing tens of _thousands_ of years of history. Even if you broke down every single atom in every single universe that has ever and will ever exist, there would _never_ be enough energy to even _begin_ to grant such a wish. That's not even getting _started_ on the fact that Kingdom Hearts is a corrupted, broken machine..."

"Even if such a wish worked..." Axel continues to deconstruct, "There's no way that we would be part of that new universe. You're talking about nothing short of our _suicide_ right now."

"Can you _really_ justify your own life over the _zillions_ of other people we'd be saving?" Sora counters.

"Easily," Axel retorts, "They wouldn't be the same people. At all. Everyone you might be hoping to save will stay dead in this new universe. All you'd _really_ be doing is willing into existence a set of replacements that have nothing to do with anything we know. They would be completely and totally _fake_."

"We can't be so sure that's what will happen," Sora insists, his resolve only strengthened, "It spared us all last time, didn't it? It brought everybody on those worlds back to life, right?"

"It brought back _imitations_," Axel retorts, "You think I was just speculating? You think Xehanort just left the issue alone even after he saw you wield the power of Kingdom Hearts? You think it was just chance that brought Organization XIII down upon you and everybody even slightly connected? Of _course_ not: we tested the _crap_ out of absolutely _everything_ we could think of and the results were _scary_. There's just no way in _hell_ we could let you have that wish."

"And why the _hell_ should I listen to _you?_" Sora shouts with a wave of his arm as he rises out of his seat threateningly, Axel leaning back in faked shock, "You guys _ruined_ our liv-"

"Children, _please_," Uina curtly interrupts, smacking his crutch against the ground, "We will _not_ fight each other over some petty 'he said, she said, they kidnapped me for invasive experiments' crap. We're not going to get through this if we don't work together. Axel, please continue. You're making a surprising amount of sense for a change."

"I have nothing more to say," Axel wraps up, his voice in monotone, "Sora's plan is senseless suicide regardless whether or not it can even happen and I will do everything in my power to stop him."

"Anna's hiding something," Emily quickly diverts before Sora can say anything, hoping to diffuse the situation. Everybody turns to face her, Anna looking a bit hurt.

"Anna?" Anna helpfully repeats in a wistful tone, tilting her head at Emily, "You _still_ don't believe me?"

"What are you talking about?" Uina asks, his voice rather unsurprised.

"Anna told Maleficent she could stop the Heartless any time she wanted," Emily declares, voice full of conviction.

"I was being just a _lit-tle_ facetious back there..." Anna sighs.

"Is this true?" Sora asks, outrage starting to fill his face.

"Technically, yes," Anna starts to explain, not bothering to turn, "Rea-"

"Then why did you do _**nothing?**_" Sora shouts angrily, everybody in the room flinching just a little. Kairi, in particular, seems to be the most put off, tears starting to form in her eyes.

"...realistically, no," Anna continues after an awkward pause, turning to face Sora, "It's true the Heartless can't touch me or anyone else with celestial tint. I could have waded through them, hunted down all the primes, and sealed all their cores within me, but it's not that easy. It's _never_ that easy. Even before that hybrid sent them into overdrive, it would have still taken _months_ to travel the Corridors to every single one. That's not even getting into the fact that I was still bound to a preliminary contract and while I had Maleficent fooled, spending too long away from her would have raised questions and made her figure out how to _really_ control me. There was nothing I could have done."

"Wait a second," Emily says, accidentally cutting Sora off, "Why am _I_ the one blamed for converting Julia into a Lightside? _You're_ the one that threw me at her in the first place knowing something would happen. Doesn't that make _you_ responsible for the universe going to hell?"

"And Sora didn't know he'd create a paradox," Anna defensively diverts, "It's all hindsight..."

"...I believe in Sora," Riku butts in, also accidentally cutting his friend off. Everybody turns to face him, most of them kind of surprised.

"Wait, what?" Uina comments, genuinely shocked, "That's not you at all, Riku. Now's not the time for joking."

"I'm completely serious," Riku explains to his stunned onlookers, "Let's say we get to this new universe: then what? What are we going to do with our lives? The magic can't come with us, so we'd just be ordinary people. Then what? Are we just going to get nine to five jobs, growing old and doing nothing of any meaning? Are we going to sit on that train every weekday morning and night, wondering what could have been until sorrow consumes us all? Or are we going to take a chance, however slim, however suicidal, and try to set things _right?_"

The room goes silent with Riku's impromptu speech, everybody glancing around to everybody else. Emily isn't quite sure what to make of this sermon; public speaking isn't really Riku's forte, after all. Still, there is a pretty good point to it: how could one live knowing that they selfishly chose their own lives over such a staggeringly large number of others? And really, what is there to do in Emily's old universe but ponder how much more meaning they had here? Perhaps she would rather choose certain death over that eternal longing...

After a long, long while, something unexpected happens: Anna starts clapping. A slow, methodical clap with absolutely no emotion in it, but clapping, nonetheless. Everybody just stares at her as she starts pacing around the room, glancing over everybody with that doubtful stare of her's.

"Bravo," Anna quips between slow claps, "You've convinced absolutely nobody. Not even yourself."

"Don't listen to her," Riku dismisses with a gesture, "We haven't even known her a week and she has already lied ab-"

"No, Riku," Uina quickly interrupts with an irritated frown, "It's not about her: it's about all of us. I'm not throwing away my life for the infinitesimal possibility that maybe, we'll all be replaced with a bunch of meaningless shadows."

"Who says we _won't_ be preserved?" Sora insists, his eyes starting to mist a little, "It spared us all last time!"

"Those people were _clones_, Sora!" Axel cuts in, "Every single one of them from Radiant Garden all the way to the Destiny Islands!"

"Wait..." Kairi finally speaks up, voice heavy, "Does that mean... _I'm_ fake?"

While many awkward pauses have come and gone, this one really hits from an unexpected angle. Just what is Kairi getting at, anyway? Wasn't she present during the whole trip to Kingdom Hearts in the first place? Why would she have been resurrected?

"...yes..." Axel very, very quietly says with eyes closed and head hung. With that out in the open, Kairi's eyes start dripping over as her lip quivers. Sora and Riku look upon her with all sympathy as Uina, Anna, and even Chou just look kind of blank. Kairi tries to say something more, but her composure finally breaks and she starts sobbing with all her might.

"Please don't take it to mean you're not a real person," Axel attempts to console, "You're real. You're just technically not the original... Naminé tampered with your memories directly and it didn't bug you, so why should this?"

"I'd rather give my life to others than live a fake one!" Kairi blurts out between tears.

"See?" Sora declares with conviction, turning to face the other group, "Three of us already think we need to make that wish. For the good of the universe!"

"This is _not_ a democracy," Uina responds harshly, "This is my ship and Jamie's the one that knows the way. If you don't like it, tough cookies."

"How can you even _listen_ to her?" Riku shouts, outraged.

"I listen to reason," Uina coldly states, starting to lose his patience. Anna gives off a soft sigh before picking herself up into the most authoritative stance possible, limbs and wings hanging ominously.

"If you want to throw your lives away," Anna starts critically, her tone and demeanor hostile, "Then go right ahead. Step out of the airlock. I don't care. I only brought you along because my best friend would hate me forever if I didn't, but I'm not leading anyone that's going to kill us all. You should be _thankful_ we can even live at al-"

"_**NO!**_" Sora shouts, summoning his blue keyblade and rushing Anna with fierce determination. It's only by her lightning reflexes that she summons her red spear and blocks his overhead swing with only centimeters to spare. With weapons locked, Sora leans in with both hands on the hilt and brings his face close to Anna's.

"Someone as cold as you is _unworthy_ of Riku's keyblade!" Sora shouts, tears of rage still flowing down his bruised cheeks. Anna tilts her head curiously at this statement, a quizzical look on her face. Suddenly, she thrusts an open palm into Sora's chest, launching him back in a skid several meters. Before he even gets a chance to react, she opens her hand the rest of the way and sends forth some kind of visible distortion that sends him into a fit of convulsions. His keyblade starts splintering apart bit by bit as he lets out a dull, pained groan.

"Don't fight!" Chou finally chimes in with a panicky voice, shaking in terror. Even without any weapons, Riku decides to join in and rushes to tackle Anna. Unfortunately for him, she doesn't prove so easily stopped. Without ever breaking her wave of distortion, she smacks Riku into an involuntary crouch with an overhead arc and quickly sweeps him off his feet with a twirl. Before he even gets a chance to land flat on his back, she slams the blunt end of her spear into one shoulder and stomps the other with a foot to complete the pin. All the while, Sora continues writhing in pain, Kairi continues sobbing her eyes out, and all Uina, Axel, or Emily do is watch the violence with more than a little discomfort, unable to think of what to do.

But not Chou. As if summoning forth all her strength into glowing pink orbs around her fists, she rushes Anna from the blindside. Two punches burst with fuchsia flashes, burning through the black dress and charring Anna's skin with enough force to break her concentration.

"Argh," escapes a pained grunt from Anna's lips as she doubles over in pain, the spear breaking apart and the distortion releasing Sora from his agony. Her veins bulge and harden as the burns of the impact areas slowly spread, skin turning into a deep purple. Anna's eyes and wings start twitching and spasming as she starts hyperventilating. Even though she has every opportunity to keep wailing on her wounded target, Chou seems to suddenly realize what she just did and starts apprehensively backing away.

But even such Feylinus voodoo doesn't bring Anna down. Oh, no. Anna suddenly twirls around and uppercuts Chou across the room, ungraceful but still lithe and agile. With the alien down for the count at her feet, rather than follow up with a more decisive blow, she instead closes her eyes and stills her breath as if in some zen state. The once-spreading wounds come to a halt and then start receding, veins loosening and skin softening. After several seconds of ever-calmer breathing, her perfect pale skin regains its full luster.

Before she gets a chance to even so much as open her eyes, Riku scrambles to his feet and tackles her from behind. With both of them smashing into the wall, he capitalizes on his surprise by repeatedly slamming her head into the steel with both hands. Blood starts to dribble from a cut in her forehead, staining the white stripes of her otherwise pitch black hair.

"You leave Chou alone!" Riku shouts, darkness in his voice and hanging around his form. No longer content to watch everybody turning on each other, Uina staggers through his injuries and tears the white haired boy away with a swing of his crutch. It could have been a very stupid move because Riku throws a bolt of pure darkness as he stumbles to the ground, but by sheer reflex alone, Uina whips out his baton with his other hand and knocks the attack into the floor. With brass wand at the ready, he looms menacingly over the disobedient boy.

Anna doesn't get much of a break because rather than assisting his best friend, Sora instead rushes the momentarily stunned black-winged girl with keyblade at the ready. Axel, also, joins the fray just barely in time, sweeping in and deflecting a downwards slice with a chakram. He quickly kicks Sora flat onto his back, also looming menacingly over his chosen target. Obviously some kind of personally charged thing because they stare each other down with a mortal hostility that singes the air between them.

All the while, Emily watches the unfolding chaos and ponders what, exactly, she should do. Forced angelic form or not, she's no paragon without her weapons. Even if she did have them, which side should she take? Neither solution seems too appealing and it all comes down to the fact that her best friends are willing to fight even their former comrades. Should she support them to the very end even if it means jeopardizing any hope of reaching Kingdom Hearts in the first place?

"All of you: calm the hell down!" Uina shouts. Out of completely nowhere, the ship violently jolts to a side. Everybody still on their feet stagger around as loud clangs and crunches fill the air, a rumble slowly rattling the steel interior. Obviously not thinking about the here and now, Sora throws himself back onto his feet and rushes his mortal enemy with keyblade trailing behind. Unfortunate for Axel, he proves much too slow to counter this attack of opportunity, a sidewards slash across his belly spraying blood across his attacker's face. In usual Nobody fashion, he doesn't even flinch as he desperately blocks the follow-up, would-be fatality.

The struggle of the ship itself finally makes itself clear as another jolt bursts apart sections of the hull like earthquake fissures. Pieces of floor and wall break off to reveal some kind of bizarre landscape below, everything moving at breakneck speed. Violent wind and blinding white light of a weird magenta-tinted pastel pour in from the cracks, swirling like a refracted pool of water. Just as everybody finally regains their composure and braces themselves against the hurricane, a shrill, deafening voice rings through the air.

_Mine!_

"Oh, sh-" Uina says, interrupted as the floor beneath him gives way. Everybody watches in horror as he plummets out into the open, quickly vanishing into the horizon. More cracks start threatening the remaining occupants, the next one to fall being none other than Anna herself. Kairi screams in terror as Sora drops out, Axel just barely hopping back in time to save himself. It doesn't do him a whole lot of good because the next lost floor section takes both him and the shrieking girl out into the swirling abyss of light.

The ship finally gives up the ghost and breaks in half right from underneath Emily with a deafening metallic snap. She doesn't even get the chance to react as violent winds batter her from all angles, yanking her limbs and wings in awkward, painful ways. Try as she might to regain control and finally put her flight to the test, all the twirling and spiraling throws her into a dizzied frenzy. She can barely see through her disorientation to the fast coming ground...


	85. Feel Good Book of the Summer

There's something funny about how Emily keeps surviving these massive falls. Whether it be off a clock tower, out of a skyscraper, or upwards into a darkness-fueled hurricane, she always manages to get back up none the worse for wear. It's only a given that since the show is, indeed, still going on, she managed the impossible by surviving a fall from the burning wreckage of a shattering space ship. Amazing how that somehow works out in spite of all odds pointing to the contrary.

Before even opening her eyes, there's already a weirdness in her weightless state. She feels as if she's floating in some kind of forwards direction, but whether that's up, down, or to a side is completely unknown. Even though she feels completely free of any intuitive gravity, there's all this pressure squeezing her skin from all angles. Still, she dare not open her eyes because of some primal fear that they would be pushed right out of their sockets. Nothing to do but just let this momentum carry her and ponder on the mysteries of life... such as why she isn't breathing...

It doesn't take long after that revelation for the pressure to let up around the front of her face. She gulps down one big breath right away, but it gets pushed out before she can even think. Dry coughs bounce her in and out of this pressure, her limbs thrashing about with claps and splashes... so, wait, this is water? But why does it not feel like water? What is going on?

She finally manages the will to open her eyes, flinching in expectation of that night vision burn that... never comes. Fully adjusted right out the gate, she looks around to find an overwhelming amount of white. A white sun piercing through a dull, fluorescent white sky casts nary a shadow over the white ground and milky white water that currently bathes Emily. White trees sprout up from the white grass, but not one is fully formed. Instead, they turn blockier the further up they go and seem to break apart in a pixelated wireframe fashion as if they were incomplete 3D renders. These imperfect vector lines give the only color to this place, their prismatic scatterings favoring pastels of a magenta hue. Broken and splintering, surrounded and spiraling.

But far be it for this flickering landscape to stop there. The first distant feature to catch Emily's eye is a rising stack of black smoke. Just barely visible over the horizon is a flaming clump of twisted steel and broken fiberglass, a trail of smaller pieces leaving a path leading up to it: the final resting place of the... a Four Winds Science Vessel. It pales in comparison to a building much further off in the distance. Appearing as some kind of cross between a domed stadium and a cancerous growth, thick pipes jut out of its core and snake through the ground. Much like its surroundings, this structure is also breaking apart in prismatic pixels. Just where is she...

_You're almost there. Just a little more..._

With one loud snap of suction, Emily's body pops right out of the water and smacks back against the now hard surface. She quickly bounces up with a flap of her wings to find the water quickly freezing over in prismatic sparkles, turning into the same grassy ground as everything else. Some kind of rainbow path of hard light juts out before Emily's feet, the broken trees swaying aside as it beams straight to the unknown building. Awfully convenient of this bizarre planet to make this as easy as possible for her.

But something else catches her attention. Up in the sky as little more than a dot is some kind of ominous black bird, swooping along towards that fateful dome. Doesn't take a genius brain for Emily to recognize it as Anna: on a world this barren, there's no mistaking it. So it's a race towards destiny? Her versus the so-called 'ancient destroyer'? Well, for a change, Emily's forced transformation isn't such a bad thing after all.

Just as practiced so many times before, Emily leans forward and spreads her wings as wide as they will go. She flaps with all her might, but these appendages just don't have that Axel seal of quality. She manages a meter or so after a dozen flaps before a loss of focus brings her back to the ground. So much for Anna's insistence she'll get used to it... then a thought crosses her mind: what about a running start? Worth a shot. Emily dashes across the glassy rainbow as fast as her tired legs will take her, leaping with wings spread and flapping with all her might...

...and it works. It really works. She catches the air and starts gliding without too much flapping necessary, not anywhere near as fast as Anna but quite a lot easier than walking. Without any other guidance, she decides to follow this rainbow path wherever it may go. Sure, it may not go anywhere near the ship wreck... you know what? Screw the path. First thing's first: she has to see if there are any survivors. No way she's going to win this race against Anna, anyway.

Diverting off the path, it comes as a surprise as the rainbow bends underneath her in awkward blips to try and force her back towards the dome. It's almost like the kind of self-adjusting navigation system she remembers in her uncle's Lexus. She can almost imagine the passive-aggressive sounding voice whining at her to start following it.

She doesn't even get halfway to the wreckage before finding some people. Surrounded by a patch of stained red ground is Axel, his tattered shirt now a shade of dark purple broken up by jutting shards of metal embedded in his back. He kneels on the ground with an unresponsive Kairi in his outstretched arms, the gash in his stomach drenching her in an ample stream of blood. Not like she isn't contributing her own share; in fact, as bad as Axel has it, it's now clear the meter-wide stained ground isn't too masculine in origin. Emily yanks herself upright and tumbles to a stop just beside them, Axel barely flinching away from his solemn gaze upon Kairi's still face... oh, dear...

"Are you okay?" Emily asks, circling around the two without the rainbow road following, thankfully. Closer scrutiny shows half a dozen holes the size of bottle caps all over her torso, blood pouring out at a surprisingly fickle rate. It doesn't take but a second to find several metallic shards tossed aside, bloody from end to end and tipped off with bits of pink dress turned fuschia from so much blood... blood everywhere...

"Sora got my liver, pancreas, kidneys, both intestines, bladder, and part of a lung back there," Axel answers in total monotone, his equally blank face still not looking away, "Something caught me from my several kilometer fall, but my legs still broke in twenty seven fractures with three sticking out. I've lost about three liters of blood so far, the other two aren't getting filtered of the solar-rusted steel poisoning my veins... and yet, I still feel nothing..."

"...is Kairi okay?" Emily asks, already knowing the grim answer. Axel closes his eyes with that question, bowing his forehead down onto Kairi's punctured chest. Even still, his expression does not change as he grips Kairi ever tighter.

"...it's okay," Axel continues, still monotonous, "It will be all right. Don't you see? We made it. We're in paradise. We're finally here and everything we've ever wanted is just over that hill. New hearts, new lives, new bodies, new souls. We can be purified of all that is wrong. We can be born anew, unshackled by cold, unfeeling fate. We can plow our own paths from here on out and nothing can stop us. No empires, no Heartless, no Nobodies, nothing. Don't you understand, my little girl? We can be beautiful..."

Emily awkwardly stands there as Axel goes completely still, his arms gently and unwillingly lowering Kairi to the ground. Methodical breaths wisp through his slack jaw at longer intervals, each new one more forced than the last. Color drains from his sweaty skin as it loosens ever so slightly, black veins slowly appearing. This morose scene finally plays out to its only conclusion as he clumps forward flat onto Kairi's body. Even with his body failing and life fading, he still manages one more statement with that final, rattling breath.

_Kingdom Hearts at last..._

Coming literally out of nowhere and startling Emily witless, Axel's signature chakrams snap back into reality with a muffled thunderclap and clatter uselessly onto the ground in front of him. One final souvenir of a puzzling, polarizing figure that never did seem to find what he was looking for. Emily stands there and contemplates what she should do with the two bodies laying before her. Should she try to bury them or is there too little time? Perhaps she should take a memento to bring to the others? It's almost depressing how she doesn't feel very sad to see two people so close to her die in front of her eyes, but there's only the fate of the universe just off in the distance...

"...I'm sorry," Emily says, kneeling down and picking up the two chakrams. As barren a world this may be and as awkward a fighting style these weapons demand, there's no way she should fly another meter without some kind of protection. For reasons unknown, there's some soothing, reassuring quality pulsing through the very grips. It's almost as if something is telling her that she shouldn't be afraid, it will be all right. That's just the feeling she needs to hang onto if she is going to make it through this dire disaster.

Armed with the last remnant of Organization XIII and still unsatisfied, Emily continues right along towards the wreckage in spite of that nagging rainbow road. No matter how grim their prospects, she has to find out what happened to everybody else. It's just what a good friend does, after all. Things only look worse as she draws closer and closer to the smoldering pile. No bodies yet, but she can already feel the intense heat even from half a kilometer away. It's a weird kind of blue fire that engulfs even the steel and glass as if it were wood. Is this just a side-effect of the engine that makes these machines possible?

Just when it couldn't look more bleak, the whole heap explodes in a bright blue column of fire. Glass and metal swirl around it like the outer layer of a tornado, not a single scrap escaping this invisible wall. This funnel cloud of blue blaze and former spaceship twists several kilometers into the white sky and suddenly stops, all the bits and pieces hanging a second before falling down in a sharp shower. All this splintering commotion and not a single body in sight; nothing more to do here.

With that downer in mind, Emily finally obeys this planetary navigation system and glides along the rainbow road. The weird imagery surrounding her fades to a blur as the fate of her friends weighs heavy on her mind. Sure, any rational person wouldn't expect humans to survive falling out a speeding spaceship, but then, how is she still alive? How did Axel survive... if just for a little? She has to believe that Sora and Riku are way too tough to ever die in such a senseless way... but then, there's Kairi. She just did and that really breaks Emily's assumption that the trio are invincible; an idea instilled by the video games. She very well could stumble across either of their bodies down this prismatic road.

Sadly, a dozen kilometers of shining road later, she has yet to find a single trace of anybody else. Perhaps she really is the sole survivor... outside of Anna, but she hardly counts. The building is nearly upon her and she can't help but feel insignificant in its presence. The archway of the front gate alone is so tall that it almost seems to squash her by its gravity alone and with so much intricate runic imagery carved into the magenta coral, it boggles the mind to envision how many man hours went into its creation. If nothing else, nobody can claim the precursors didn't think and build big.

Even this awe-inspiring sight pales in comparison to the main structure. It almost feels like a whole planet embedded into the surface of this glittering white world. If so, it's a parasitic relationship if the giant tubes plunging into the surface are any indication. Even these vaguely translucent, honeycomb-pattern pipes drawing copious amounts of a glowing gold liquid dwarf even the largest cities. Whatever this building is here for, its role can only be of a truly staggering magnitude.

"Kingdom Hearts at last..." Emily mutters to herself. Those words must hold some special meaning because the dome starts turning on its massive axis. The outer shell slides to reveal a stark black door just as tall as the gateway outside. It's not even as though it's completely dark inside: there's a wall of total black just past the threshold. No reflection, nothing. Just a sheer unknown, beckoning her to plunge headfirst. Who is she to deny something that feels so much like fate?

"Wait!" shouts a hoarse voice from nearby. Emily spins on her heel to find another bloodied figure propped up against the mammoth archway. Garbed in stained grey military fatigues and heavy bandages already coming loose, it is, of course, Uina. Maybe not quite the face she would have chosen, but a familiar and relatively friendly one, nonetheless.

"I'm so glad to see you," Emily obliges, approaching him, "Are you okay?"

"Do I look okay?" Uina gurgles out with a cough of blood.

"I suppose not..." Emily answers, "...in fact, you look like crap."

"I feel it, too," Uina chuckles through more spurts of blood, his unintentional smile showing a missing tooth on a side, "I'm surprised we even survived the fall... well, surprised I survived. You're just a little more gifted than I am... I'm so glad I got here before you. You wouldn't believe how hard it was to walk here without crutches."

"How long has it been?" Emily asks, "I've been awake about... thirty to forty minutes?"

"A lot longer than that, I assure you," Uina says, shuffling through his pockets, "We can't waste any time. The Door to Darkness is open... not like it's the only way in, but it means it has chosen someone and is ready to grant wishes. I have to believe Sora and Riku made it as well and might even be inside... I suppose Axel bit it, huh?"

"How can you tell?" Emily asks, Uina gesturing to the chakrams, "...oh."

"Look," Uina continues, pulling out some kind of sun-shaped brass medallion, "I know what you're thinking. You think you need to stick by your friends to the end. You think you need to help them make that wish and since you come from a world where this is a children's video game, you probably think it will turn out okay. It won't. Best case scenario, Kingdom Hearts rejects them and nothing happens. Worst case, it creates a cross-universal singularity that will quite literally crush every single atom into something not even the size of a grain of sand. They're not thinking straight and you need to stop them no matter what."

"But there's something wrong with Anna..." Emily says.

"Of course there is," Uina says with a morbid chuckle, fiddling with the device, "In case you forgot, I am... was an APA-certified psychologist. I know what isolation does to a person and I can't even _imagine_ spending 35,000 years locked in a box, fully awake and with just enough psychic power to catch glimpses of the outside. There's _absolutely_ some kind of madness to her, but it's almost like she looped around right back into genius. Coming up with a plan like her's requires a special kind of stark raving _lunacy_ to get past all the gaping flaws and make a whole lot of wrong decisions turn out _right_."

"What do you think we should do?" Emily asks.

"Stay the course," Uina says, tossing the chain in a loop around Emily's neck, "Do what Jamie... Anna... that girl says. Maybe you're thinking she can't be trusted and that you're betraying your friends, but she's the only shot we have. Don't cock it up."

"...sure," Emily says with a shrug of her shoulders. She's still unsure of what the hell she's even going to do. From what she can tell, it appears that Kingdom Hearts has chosen her as its destined one or something of that nature and Anna did say she would 'hold the universe in the palm of her hand'. She can't help but find the staggering implications that holds overwhelming and there's still the issue that everything seems so hopeless. She doesn't trust Anna, she doesn't trust Uina, and while she so very desperately wants to trust Sora and Riku, they're completely and understandably suicidal. It all just feels so very hopeless...

"...well?" Uina says with eyelids drooping half-open.

"...well what?" Emily responds.

"Destiny awaits," Uina says as he starts drifting off, "Did you bring your jacket?"

"...yes, I did," Emily says, gently lowering Uina by his shoulder as he passes out. So it turns out that he went delirious at some point. Lovely. It really does just come down to her versus the entire universe at large. It's almost funny just how unimaginably epic the scale has become so very, very fast. To think of the Heartless killing so many people over a matter of weeks is beyond her. She can't imagine it. It's like trying to imagine a million ice cream sundaes: the brain can't even begin to fathom such a number and automatically rejects it. That's how so many deaths become a mere statistic, after all.

Armed with Axel's weapons and Uina's... chunky brass thing, Emily starts a slow walk to the so-called 'Door to Darkness'. If what Uina said is true, there's still hope that Sora and Riku are still alive and just within the domed corridors. That's worth the plunge, right? 'Dive into hearts' and all that jazz. With quite literally nowhere left to go but forward, she steps straight into the all-encompassing void...

...and after a worrisome gap in her memory, she emerges within some fancy hallway just as impressively ornate as the rest of the building but in even worse shape. Like the trees outside, the pillars and archways are breaking apart in pixelated chunks of crystal. It's about the only way she can even pick apart the layout because everything in here is so very, very bright. White light pierces her eyes from every corner and even covering them with the chakrams does little to ease her aching temples. How is anybody supposed to do anything in here with so much blinding light?

_You're doing great. Nowhere left to go but forward._

Well, the disembodied voice has a point: she has come way too far to turn back now. Lowering her arms, she soldiers forward over the softly chiming floor. If the visuals of these spanning hallways are overbearing, then the soothing hum and ethereal echos provide a contrast. It eases her fear of that great unknown a little by the way it seems to speak to her and say that everything will be alright. See, this hallway opens up to a dozen story tall atrium with another huge doorway at its end opening just for her. She just has to step through and...

...it turns out everything won't be alright. Oh, no, not at all. Not with what's now facing her in this room. Sure, the spacious interior of this spherical room with its golden pipes snaking down a massive central pit invites her, but there's an occupant too terrible to believe. Several stories tall even while crouching forward is that shapely Lightside Heartless that had only just arrived on the previous world, but at this distance, Emily can recognize the finer details. That slender figure, those chiseled cheeks, and that eternal envious look in its piercing purple eyes...

...but it's not that which seals its menace. It chews another person of much smaller size within its madly grinning jaws with sickening cracks and sprays. Someone all the shades of pink and dripping a thick fuschia fluid down the chin of this monster... it can only be Chou. What a senselessly gruesome end to somebody so gentle. She doesn't deserve to go out like this: not after all she survived.

Without any sound or sudden movement on Emily's part, the mammoth Lightside Heartless lifts its head up to stare straight into her very soul. This scene finishes itself with that iconic utterance, ringing through Emily's head like a million voices bouncing through an empty cathedral.

_Mine!_

"Julia..." Emily sighs, dropping her stance, raising her wings, and lifting her chakrams in preparation. The Lightside formerly known as Julia casually rises up to its feet, spitting Chou into a hand and dismissively flinging the body away like a rag doll into a nearby wall. Disposed of its chew toy and focused completely on its target, ex-Julia circles around with clawed hands raised and waiting.

"...you don't deserve this," Emily dismisses, "You're just some proudly faceless bureaucrat nobody ever heard of. You don't deserve any of this. You don't deserve to destroy the universe. You don't deserve Axel's life, you don't deserve Kairi's life, and you definitely don't deserve Chou's life. She was so kind, so gentle... so frustrating... but she doesn't deserve to be chewed up and spat out. Give her back... give them all back!"

Ex-Julia tilts its head ominously at that statement, shuffling forward with a gleam in its eyes. Emily strides towards the monster with determination in her braced form, but it proves of little use. The giant Heartless dashes forward and smacks her into the air with an uppercut before she can even flinch, sending her zooming straight up towards the ceiling. Ex-Julia all of the sudden reappears a hundred meters over Emily and backhands her back down. She slams against a nearby wall, the chakrams bouncing out of her hands and clattering uselessly to the ground. Apparently content in itself, the ex-Julia lands on its feet with a heavy thud that shatters the floor.

Well, this is certainly the end for Emily. While she was never deluded enough to think she ever stood a chance of winning, just the way this completely dominated her is beyond any hope. Not only is it that much larger and faster than her, but it can even teleport with but a whim. How can she fight that?

_Mine!  
If you make a wish, it will-  
**Don't listen to it!**_

Emily grabs at her ears as the voices cascade within, a splitting headache throbbing through. Even though it's always been assumed that these are psychic or otherwise purely mental, ex-Julia must have heard something as well because it's looking all over the room for something. Doesn't take long before a thin black line blips across the room faster than anyone can blink. It takes a few seconds of confusion before a pitch black explosion knocks ex-Julia back a couple paces, but it doesn't do jack to so much as even bruise it. Total futility.

But something else catches Emily's attention only a second later. Out of nowhere, her ornamental rifle drops from the air right into her lap.

_You can beat her._

"But-" Emily attempts.

_Don't think about it. Just do it.  
Mine!_

"Will you shut the hell up?" Emily shouts, jumping up to her feet with an unwitting flap of her wings and grabbing the bounced gun out of the air. She lobs a few carefully aimed bullets at the bright behemoth's head, but like some kind of flickering TV screen, ex-Julia phases out just barely long enough to evade. It starts walking real slow towards Emily, but before she can fire some more useless rounds, something crashes into her from behind and sends her rolling. While tumbling forward at full speed, her sight rotates from ex-Julia in front to... ex-Julia behind? Rolling back forward reveals the front to have vanished; so ex-Julia isn't even in sync with reality any more?

Before such thoughts can drag her down, Emily catches the wind with her wings and glides upside down only a meter off the ground. She takes a potshot at the monster and surprisingly enough, it connects. Sure, the pathetic little puff of white blood from ex-Julia's shoulder doesn't bode too well, but it's progress, dammit. She tries to send more bullets into her target, but that dreaded clack of the hammer hitting an empty chamber dash that fleeting hope.

Ex-Julia reaches up to the pin prick of a wound... and jabs its claws right into its shoulder. Geysers of shining white blood and chunks of its sinew crash towards the floor as it picks out the bullet between the tips of its claws. Kind of like ripping off a finger to get rid of a splinter, but not quite. A swarm of Shimmers pour out from every crevice of the spherical wall behind ex-Julia and slither up its body, melting away into globs of white jelly that patch up the gaping wound. Fully recovered and ready for action, ex-Julia merely has to wave its arm to send all the smaller Heartless scurrying back out of view.

_Now that the bullets are gone-  
Mine!  
-you can do some real damage._

"What the hell am I supp-" Emily shouts at the ceiling, interrupted by a teleporting uppercut that sends her straight towards the snaking pipes in the center. Just as Emily gets embedded with her spread-winged back against the glowing tubes, ex-Julia teleports... and seems to slam against some kind of invisible wall only twenty meters away from the pipes. It lets out a frustrated roar as it bounces backwards and tumbles across the platform with a series of cracks and fissures. Well, it seems Emily has found a relatively safe spot, but how is she going to use this to her advantage. There must be something...

_Mine!_

Ex-Julia definitely proves relentless as it rolls back onto its feet, wiping its forehead and stomping its heel for no real reason. Emily suddenly realizes a way to make the most of this situation. It's genius, really, but there's that lingering doubt that it will kill her as well. Ex-Julia backs up a few paces and dashes towards the pipes, leaping in a wide arc... and pierces right through the invisible wall. Whatever stopped it before must have been a one time thing.

No time to think. Emily twirls the gun around and jabs it into the pipe. She doesn't even finish her stab before all the pent-up pressure shoots the gun right back out of her hands. The friction burns don't even get a chance to develop as the golden liquid sprays past her hands, even just the small mist burning like nothing she has felt before. It's only by luck that she manages to elbow her way out of her groove and drift away without dragging her arm through the geyser.

Ex-Julia is not so lucky, however. While the gun stabbing into its forehead is satisfying all its own, the spray of golden liquid does a real number on its complexion. It roars in pain as it latches onto the tubes with both claws, but it unwittingly tears through them and douses itself in more molten something. The skin melts right off and chars the sinew underneath, ex-Julia making things much worse by tearing off more swathes of pipe as it tries to catch hold. In all its scrabbling and struggle, it only dooms itself by severing the whole bundle. It falls down into the pit amidst the pouring shower of molten liquid, melting, flailing, and screaming all the way.

_Good job._

"But I didn't really do anything..." Emily gloomily comments, plopping herself down near Chou's body. While she did see ex-Julia chewing her, she was maybe expecting Chou to somehow survive. Maybe. She certainly wasn't expecting this grisly sight of a corpse drenched head to toe in pink blood and barely together at the tenuous seams. Still, she picks up what remains of Chou as gently as possible in her outstretched arms and gazes upon her blank-eyed, gaped-mouth face in morbid fascination.

"I don't suppose you're just sleeping..." Emily sighs. She doesn't get a whole lot of time to grieve over her fallen comrade as the whole place goes into red alert. Klaxons ring out as the lighted panels start dimming and rotating in sporadic waves, the golden fluid slowing to a mere dribble as the tubes recede into the ceiling.

_Critical damage to processing core cluster 07 detected. Entering recovery mode._

From all the same nooks and crannies as before, swarms upon swarms of Lightside Heartless pour across the spherical room towards the central pit. They completely ignore Emily as they dive right in, quickly replacing the molten gold as the falling deluge of choice. They hurry so fast that they end up unintentionally playing soccer with the chakrams right into the pit with them. Emily is only lucky to wade through the swarm towards what she hopes is the right door, barely managing to get within the safe archway. She gently lays Chou propped upright against the wall. An unfitting final resting place for someone so gentle and sweet, but what can she really do?

"I'm sorry," Emily uselessly apologizes, closing Chou's jaw and eyes with her two fingers, "I mean... I'm sorry I never took you seriously... I'm sorry I didn't take your life seriously. I don't know how you beat destiny... or if Anna was even telling the truth, but somehow, you did it and this is your end? You deserve better than this. You deserve to live out your life... your effectively immortal life if you only stayed with your species. I'm sorry I didn't see you as enough of a person to seal that contract with Anna right on the spot... although... no. I'm sorry I don't even care right now, but I've seen so much death. So much destruction. I just can't... _feel_ any more... dear lord, I'm rambling."

Emily bends down and gives Chou a soft peck on the cheek. Just for good luck or some misguided belief that fairy tales come true or something. Chou, of course, continues to sit there and bleed into the floor. Nope, folklore doesn't hold all the answers, after all...

_Good night, our sweet Feylinus prince..._

"Anna..." Emily mutters, looking down the ominous hallway. Well, nowhere to go but forward: Kingdom Hearts awaits.


	86. Where She Found What She Was Looking For

Emily wanders through more corridors, her mind torn by the swirling chaos all around and within her. With part of Kingdom Hearts now in ruins, it seems just that much less likely Sora's wish could ever work. It's a romantic notion, but one she can't get behind. Still, the other option is equally terrible. Tear down Kingdom Hearts? What good can possibly come of that? There has to be a better option than either suicide by wish or suicide by epic vandalism.

_Take a right at this corner._

And then there's this voice: is it Anna or is it Kingdom Hearts itself? That's the problem with telepathy: no identifiers.

Sure enough, around this corner lies another important looking room. The floor comes to an abrupt end at a railed platform, white light pouring from above and below through the cluttered, interweaving tubes. In fact, this single towering room feels more open than even the outside. The only word that can really describe this feeling is 'infinite'.

"Behind you!" shouts a distant voice. Emily checks behind to find nothing. Nope, not directed at her. She squints through the clutter of tubes to find another platform just like her's. Well, not really. This one has a bunch of menacing Lightside Heartless surrounding Sora and Riku. So nice to see they're alive even if they look like hell. Torn, bloody clothes, bruised bumps, and, in Riku's case, tangible darkness leaking from his hands. Sora slouches into his keyblade and Riku props his back against Sora's as two Lumines circle around them like wolves.

"Riku!" Emily shouts. Despite the infinite space around them, her voice doesn't echo.

"Hey, Kiko... Emily... whoever you are..." Riku says. The two Lumines take this distraction as an opportunity and lunge at them. Riku elbows off of Sora's back and ducks under a clothesline swipe, ripping his darkness-fueled hand through the creature's side. Meanwhile, Sora throws his keyblade like a javelin through the approaching monster and leapfrogs over it. Both Lumines collide into each other and burst in shining globs of dissipating fluid, the boys unharmed but still sluggish and vulnerable.

"Are you guys okay?" Emily shouts.

"Never better," Sora weakly mutters with a thumbs up without turning his head. Half a dozen Shimmers phase in from their particle clouds and leap at Riku with claws at the ready. Try as he might, he proves too worn to throw them off. Sora rushes to his friend's aid, but the Heartless prove smart for a change. Three Lumines phase in between the two and assume blocking positions. Sora tries to leap over them, but his jump proves too small and the middle Lumine yanks him back down by his ankle. All three pile on top of him, their weight opening some of his wounds to an ominously small spray of blood across the floor.

"Riku!" Sora shouts. Emily decides that weapon or no weapon, she can't stand by and watch. She runs at the rail and jumps over, spreading her wings and... slamming into one of the tubes. So she miscalculated the first jump. Big deal; it's probably just a bit too thick to glide around them, anyway. She climbs on top of the tube and jumps across to the next. Tube by tube, she slowly makes her way across the chasm. Riku writhes under the weight of so much milky mass and Sora's struggle doesn't prove a whole lot more fruitful. More Shimmers playfully wrestle each other as all dig their way through Riku's thick clothing.

But a rumble from down below fills the air. A terrible clatter of clanging metal and bursting rubber. Emily looks down to find ex-Julia clawing its way through the breaking pipes. Orange liquid splashes all over, but not only is it barely singeing its skin, but a whole battalion of Shimmers are phasing in and merging with ex-Julia by a dozen a second. It looks up with its constantly shifting face and gives that sharp smile upon spotting Emily.

_Mine!_

"Oh, crap..." Emily mutters. Ex-Julia bounces up with another snap of tubes, reaching through the melting liquid to grab at the platform above. So much weight latching on a rapidly corroding support beam snaps it right off, tilting the whole platform towards the chasm. The Heartless all roll right off and while Sora manages to grab at the rail with his fingertips, Riku isn't so lucky.

"Riku!" Emily shouts as he falls down the chasm. Ex-Julia follows him with its eyes for a few seconds before turning them back upon Emily.

_Mine!_

Emily kicks off her tube into a swoop at Riku. Ex-Julia snaps a claw at her, but just barely misses. Ruffles her feathers. Emily glides through the sprays of orange liquid and bleeding Heartless as she tries to get to Riku. Each near miss with a slower falling creature impedes her progress to save her friend, but forced as she is to keep diverting, she won't give up. She could never live with herself if she allowed even just one more person to die.

_Bank right._

Before Emily gets a chance to so much as think about that command, ex-Julia suddenly appears in front of her. She banks right and narrowly misses not just ex-Julia's swipe, but also a molten cascade flowing from a severed pipe. Orange mist singes her wings, but she barely notices. Her eyes are too focused on her falling target to let a little pain get in the way. Too bad that same determination doesn't work so great on ex-Julia's latest teleporting swipe. One nail tears a small gash in a wing as she narrowly makes it through the clapping claws, zooming ever faster towards Riku. Almost there... almost there... got him.

"Urgh," Riku groans as Emily slams into him with a hug. She avoids more sprays of molten orange and the last few Heartless as she thinks hard on-

_Go down the other tunnel.  
Mine!_

Sure enough, here comes a small, diagonal fork in the pit. Molten liquid pours over and into it at an uneven rate. Kind of looks like bubbles in cooking oil. She tracks the gaps and tries to time herself with one large gap, but who else shows up to distract her? Emily barely dives away from ex-Julia's teleporting swipe, but she gets knocked off-course just enough to prove dangerous. While the section is thinner than usual, she bursts through the molten liquid all the same.

"Argh!" Emily screams against her will as the liquid burns her all over. The sound of a truly massive slam rumbling through the foundation gives the good news that ex-Julia won't be following. Emily finds out the bad news as she tries to air brake by yanking upright and spreading her wings. Try as she might, she barely slows down at all and the pain gets rivaled by a weird feeling that can only be described as... more surface area. Quick glances to her wings reveal them to have holes like moth-eaten garments. Quick glances that nearly plunge her into the stream.

"Dammit!" Emily shouts as she tries to flap away from the liquid. Things look bleak as her diagonal journey through this tunnel seems like it's going to end by gravity straightening her out, but another fork below her collects the molten orange. Still, even as she travels down the clean path, her useless wings fail to keep her aloft and she stumbles across the diagonal floor below her. Try as she might to never let Riku go, it barely takes three hard smacks before a dislocated shoulder loosens her grip just enough. The only solace she has is that at the very least, she'll die a few microseconds before Riku.

One can never say luck isn't on Emily's side, though. The path opens up to a spherical room made of some kind of light-killing material, leaving it unusually dark compared to the rest of the building. Still, lines of blue lights illuminate a huge pool of equally blue liquid that makes up the bottom half of the room. Emily and Riku flit through the air for a good ten seconds before splashing into the liquid. At least it isn't corrosive.

Yet, even though hitting water at this speed should be just as bad as hitting ground, Emily still... somehow... survives. Her body once again refuses to breathe as she bobs into the deep blue liquid, floating back out just as fast. She and Riku both pop up out of the pool at the same time, the fluid crystallizing underneath them like translucent, prismatic ice. It even smacks her shoulder back in place. Okay, it's now plainly obvious that greater forces are at work here. This is just too convenient.

"Why was I spared?" Emily mutters to herself, instinct uselessly flapping her wings to try to get her off the ground. Takes a second before she remembers the old-fashioned way of getting up.

_SET Subject(Emily Tennenbaum) = Destined Savior;  
IF (Destined Savior = True)  
THEN (Survival = Priority)  
ELSE (Subject(*) = Expendable);_

She can even hear the punctuation of that statement. No matter. She can still walk just fine even if every movement sends screaming pain through her limbs. Riku might be just fine. He has to be. After all, Kingdom Hearts decided to spare him as well even if it could have let him sink. She stumbles across the crystal ground, soothing tones filling the air. Tones that hardly soothe her fried nerves.

She finally collapses onto her hands and knees just as she reaches Riku, but she doesn't let that stop her. She only takes a second's break before she turns him onto his back. As bad as she certainly feels with her skin singed and wings torn, Riku somehow manages to look even worse. With his clothes destroyed to indecency and half his skin blackened, he wheezes through his charred lips. Once again, the assumption of invulnerability fails to protect somebody as 'important' as even Riku.

"Oh, Riku!" Emily sobs.

"That bad, huh?" Riku mutters, coughing up a tiny puff of the orange liquid, "You're not much better. You look as good as I feel..."

"Oh, thank lord," Emily sighs with relief, "You're going to be okay."

"I am?" Riku mutters.

"You're talking too much to die on me," Emily says, reaching under Riku and feebly trying to lift him, "I'll get you out of-"

_Leave him._

"Leave me," Riku says, shoving one of Emily's arms away.

"...what?" Emily says.

"Just... go," Riku insists, "Save the day like you've always wanted. For me."

"Haven't heard that one before..." Emily somberly sighs, "I can't."

"Why not?" Riku says, "You know it needs to happen."

_Listen to... crap. Hang on._

"I just can't," Emily insists, jabbing her arm back under Riku, "I left Xion alone and she died on me. I can't let that happen to you."

"And you're going to do a whole lot of good?" Riku says, shoving Emily's arm away again, "Cradling me in your arms? You can barely stand on your own."

"I'll get you fixed up," Emily says, "I'll get you to Anna and-"

"Her?" Riku says, "You'd seriously bring me to _her_ after what I did back on the ship?"

"I don't think she holds a grudge," Emily says, "She went this far for me, right? I think I can get her to help you... you wouldn't choose to die than let her help you... would you?"

"I would, but it doesn't matter," Riku says, "I'll be just fine and even if I do die, it still doesn't matter. You've got to get up there and make that wish. Help Sora make that wish. It might doom us all, but there's that tiny bit of hope. It's all we have going for us... in fact, it _has_ to come out right. It just... _has_ to. You trust me, don't you?"

"I want to, but I can't..." Emily sighs, taking her other arm out from under Riku, "...but you're not going to let me carry you, are you?"

"Now you get it," Riku chuckles, "You're a strange, strange girl and I have to admit: I like that about you. I really do. Don't ever change..."

Riku sighs as he closes his eyes, deliberately letting himself go limp. Nope, not worrying at all. Emily waits a few seconds before deciding to carry him anyway. She reaches under, grips his arms, and heaves... to no effect. Even with her steeling against all the numbing agony shooting through her nerves, her muscles just won't budge. Still, even if Riku has gone limp and unresponsive, he does seem to still be breathing. Loathe as she is to leave him here, she retracts her arms and stumbles back onto her feet.

Off in the distance... very, very distant, a muffled explosion sounds off. Huge amounts of dust gently shake off the ceiling, collecting in a grey cloud for a few seconds before vanishing into nothing.

_Warning: Unauthorized personnel detected approaching central core. Initiating defenses... failed. Destined Savior required. Initiating Temporary Keyblade Initiative Mark G17._

At the far end of this crystalline room, an arched section recesses back into the wall. This newly created doorway slides up, revealing a now-blinding room of white and peach. The stark light reacts with the crystal pool and intermingles to create a swirling, prismatic frost cloud. Like Aurora Borealis, but up close and personal. A cold wind blows this shimmering diamond dust over Emily and Riku. While this mist does nothing to heal her wounds or restore her tattered wings, it soothes the pain away. Exactly the feeling she needs right now.

No longer in agony, Emily straightens herself out and starts towards the mysterious room. The dulcet tones of the floor ring out with every step, building to a unified crescendo as she enters the tiny new room. Domed like all the others, all that's within these white walls is a simple pedestal with a pinkish-orange, glowing crystal sword embedded. Seriously? Sora gets a blue sword, Riku gets a red sword, and Emily is stuck with this shade that reminds her of coral? Well, who is she to deny her so-called 'destiny'?

With an apprehensive sigh, she walks up to the sword and grips the hilt with both hands. Won't budge. Well, isn't that great? Refusing to give up so easy, she pulls harder and harder at the sword with all her might. While it still doesn't move, arcs of electricity surge from the pedestal and collide all around the room. Passes right through Emily's body without any feeling at all. Still, she feels some great surge of power building within her trembling hands, erasing her doubt and filling her with confidence. Just as the trembling threatens to rattle her skeleton to a fine mist, the keyblade finally bursts out of the pedestal with a blinding white light.

* * *

**.**

* * *

Floating, weightless, detached. A girl made of vector grids and shimmering polygons passes by. Damaged, incomplete. She smiles in pain.

_Release me!_

* * *

**.**

* * *

The white light fades from Emily's eyes, her mind blank and only just starting to absorb details. Feels like a computer booting up again. There must be a gap in her memory because she now stands on some kind of floating platform making its way through an elevator shaft. A glance to her hand finds the new keyblade in her firm grip... did she sign on for something way beyond her capability? In fact, if Kingdom Hearts is truly malfunctioning, perhaps taking a gift from it wasn't exactly the brightest idea in the world...

The shaft opens up to reveal yet another impossibly huge room. The ancients sure didn't skimp on interior design, did they? Untold millions of tubes snake from above and below into a central reactor core, fueling a bright orange nova visible through the scattered plate glass windows. This intricate fusion reactor is so large that even at what must be kilometers away, it takes up nearly all of Emily's field of vision. Just above the machine is a web of steel catwalk platforms, making the hanging reactor almost look like the spider that spun it.

It takes several uneasy minutes of the platform rising both up and forward before it finally slams into one of the hundreds of circular docks. On top of the reactor core half a kilometer away are several thousand thin-screen computer monitors, some arranged symmetrically but most in chaotic disarray that turn the place into a maze. They all flash lots and lots of unreadable text, charts, graphs, and other miscellaneous information that probably wouldn't make much sense even if she could make them out.

It doesn't take but a second for the source of their disarray to come into view. With a bright flash of red and blue, Sora gets flung into view and slams head first into a monitor bank. Several screens shatter with a loud crash, the remaining working shards flashing some dire warning message. Sora slides down onto his feet, slamming the screen with the blunt end of his keyblade and launching himself back out of view towards his unseen opponent.

So this new keyblade is going to be put to use right away, is it? She certainly feels ready even if she's still doubtful about the whole situation. No matter. She spreads her wings and looks to her sides to find that both are still torn and tattered. Not like they offer much combat benefit. She starts running along the steel platforms towards the cluster of computer equipment, staring at her keyblade all the while. She tries to intuitively feel some kind of magical connection, but just like her new body, there's nothing there. If only the ancients, in all their universal glory, could have spared enough for a cheap printout of instructions to go with this weapon...

Another loud crash launches somebody up into the air, but instead of Sora, it's none other than Anna. She almost looks like a discarded rag doll with her loose limbs trailing and red spear clattering away across the tops of the screens. The torn dress and scabbed-over gash across her belly don't show much promise either, but she doesn't let it stop her. She yanks herself back upright with a flap of her dark wings and blips the refitted keyblade back into her open palm.

"Careful, now," Anna says as she hovers around, still apparently unaware of Emily. She has that blank face of undiluted determination, her emotions locked away from everybody else. She circles around a few more seconds before diving headfirst with spear held forward, vanishing behind the cluster of computer monitors. Doesn't even take a second for a bright red flash and resulting shockwave to shatter a hundred more screens. Whatever they are fighting, it must be pretty powerful to break their defenses like that.

"What's going on?" Emily shouts out.

_IF (Subject(*) =/= Destined Savior) OR (Subject(*) =/= Destined Accomplice)  
THEN (Subject(*) = Intruder);  
SEARCH String(Intruder)  
2 Results Found;_

Emily grips her keyblade as she dashes into the maze of monitors. So there are two monsters powerful enough to go toe to toe with Sora and Anna? Can't be ex-Julia because she's too wide a load to be obscured by the monitors. As Emily weaves through to where she last saw Anna, she catches a glimpse of something odd on one of the monitor arrays. It almost looks like the girl from that vision. She turns her head to find... infographics detailing pump pressures. Must have been her imagination, but who has ever come across those words and found them to be true?

After more aimless corners of increasing damage, she turns around one bend to find Sora and Anna... fighting each other. Actually, it's closer to Sora attacking and Anna defending as harmlessly as she can. Not like it's working out that great for him because while Anna is at least somewhat disconnected from her body, Sora must feel every last one of his cuts and bruises. Still, he keeps wailing vertically on Anna's spear, each wallop sliding her back on her feet. This momentum eventually presses her winged back against a monitor array, each successive hit passing through her body and cracking the screen.

With his target cornered, Sora gathers shining blue energy into his keyblade as he leaps into the air. Anna passively watches for a second as he reaches his zenith, her face oddly unconcerned. All at once, she flaps her wings off the wall of monitors to launch herself into a slide underneath Sora's downward slash. With his blade engulfed with laser-like energy, he slashes through the walls and crashes the floor with a blue shockwave explosion that shatters another hundred monitors all around. So much glass and plastic collects into a sharp cloud that forces Emily to look away.

After a few seconds, the glass dust cloud lowers to reveal Sora crutched against his keyblade and panting. This attack sure took a lot out of him, but even with Anna sliding away, she surely must have been caught in the explosion, right? Right? Emily isn't quite sure if that's for better or worse since she still isn't sure what kind of wish to make, but she's pretty sure Sora is more open to reason. Maybe. Hopefully. Sadly, it only takes the dust cloud lowering a bit more to dispel that notion. Anna casually stands back up out of the dissipating mist and taps Sora on the shoulder with index and middle finger together.

"Tag: you're it," Anna says as she hugs Sora from behind, nudging her head over his shoulder and pecking him on the cheek. Sora elbows her away in the stomach and swiftly swings his keyblade around, but Anna is swifter. She blocks the crystal sword out of his hand and slams him away with the blunt tip of her spear. As Sora bounces through the last fragile remnants of a monitor wall, Anna assumes a dark angelic pose and casually backs away.

"Why are you fighting?" Emily asks.

"We have what you would call a difference in ideology," Anna says without looking away.

"Kiko!" Sora shouts, leaping to his feet and blipping his keyblade back, "You have to help me stop Jamie!"

"Don't listen to him," Anna says with a shake of her head, "He's delusional."

"_I'm_ delusional?" Sora shouts, "_You're_ the one that would turn your back on... is that a keyblade?"

"...what, this?" Anna says, looking at her spear.

"No," Sora says, pointing at Emily. Anna finally glances over her shoulder and looks over Emily's tattered form.

"Oh, dear," Anna says, "Does that hurt? I'll heal you after we stop Sora."

"How can you speak for her like that?" Sora shouts.

"Calm down," Anna orders, "Just look at yourself. You attack me out of nowhere like that's going to bring Riku ba-"

"Don't you _dare_ speak his name!" Sora shouts as tears well in his eyes. All this shouting...

"Riku's fine," Emily volunteers.

"No, he isn't," Anna comments.

"Yes, he is," Emily insists, "I saved him from that fall."

"Then where is he now?" Sora shouts. Anna suddenly starts making a tsking noise while waving her finger.

"Emikikarle here left him to rot," Anna says with exaggerated tongue twisting on the first word, smirking just a little. What has come over her?

"Liar!" Sora shouts.

"Hey, don't take my word for it," Anna says as she holds both hands up, the spear clattering against the ground, "Why don't you ask her yourself?"

"...where is Riku?" Sora asks, staring right through Emily.

"He's safe," Emily says. As much as she wants to trust Sora, she can see the anger in his eyes. No answer she can give is going to placate-

"Where is he?" Sora asks again, now frowning.

"I told you he-" Emily attempts.

"_**WHERE IS HE?**_" Sora shouts with a wave of his free arm.

"...he told me to leave him," Emily whimpers, "But-"

"**YOU LEFT HIM BEHIND?**" Sora shouts.

"He wouldn't let me take him!" Emily shouts back, "He told me to-"

"**AND YOU **_**LISTENED?**_" Sora shouts, pounding his keyblade into the ground.

"What the _hell_ was I supposed to do?" Emily retorts, stomping a foot, "Look at me! I couldn't lift him like this! When Kingdom Hearts gave me this... thing, I blanked out and here I was. I don't even _know_ where he is!"

_Subject(Riku) = 0.000000000141 Astronomical Units at heading 37.9121ºXY, -141.23912ºYZ.  
Status: Operational_

"You left him to die!" Sora shouts, "I thought you loved him!"

"It was lust..." Emily mutters, looking down in shame. That poorly-chosen word finally tilts Sora over the edge. He leaps forward with keyblade at the ready, but rather than raise her own, Emily drops it with a clatter and kneels down. He won't strike her down. He's a good guy. A good person. He has a lot of time to realize that striking her down will only make the situation worse. He has to snap out of it. He's halfway there and he still looks angry, but he'll snap out of it. Raising his keyblade, but he'll snap out of it. Come on, come on, come on... as he brings it down, Emily closes her eyes and cringes. The blade hits and...

...

It stops. He stopped. Thank lord. He's a good guy after all. She opens her eyes to find the keyblade right up against her forehead. Blood trickles down her nose past her eyes. She looks down Sora's keyblade to his clenched hands and struggling muscles. Struggling to bring it down, but a red spear by the hilt won't let it. Sora's face still shows a fierce, determined rage that goes beyond loyalty, beyond friendship. So he really isn't that good a guy? Anna had to step in to save Emily after all? This is just so... wrong...

Anna's arms are barely tensed at all and her face is just as passive. She looks like she knew this would happen and let it escalate on purpose. Still, her intense stare and Emily's deer-in-headlights expression seem to melt Sora's face. After a worrying ten seconds that feel like an hour, he finally realizes what's going on. Even he seems shocked by it all.

"Oh, Kiko, I'm so sorr-" Sora attempts. Anna launches the keyblade in an arc behind him and slams him away with the blunt end of the spear. Sora crashes through another broken wall of monitors, sparks and warning messages lighting up the area.

"Too late!" Anna shouts, aggressively moving in with weapon at the ready. Sora leaps back to his feet, but just barely. Anna moves in with several near-miss thrusts of her spear, deflecting every one of Sora's attempted slashes without ever breaking her gaze. Each attack and deflect on Anna's part strays just a little closer to Sora as he backs away, his defense weakening. It seems that attacking Emily was enough to bring out the 'guardian Heartless angel' of Anna; so potent that even Sora, savior of the universe, can do little against it.

Sora's backing away ends with his back against another wall of monitors. With her prey pinned, Anna frowns with one eye and stabs her spear right through Sora's keyblade. Not around or catching the hilt, but breaking the crystal apart right in the middle. She flings the weapon aside by blipping her spear and takes one step back, suddenly slashing at Sora in a blurred flurry. Too fast to see what she's doing until she caps off her dozens of slices with a mighty kick in his stomach. He crashes through the otherwise undamaged wall of monitors, his hastily-shredded shirt flying apart like confetti to reveal papercut thin gashes all over his buff physique. He slams into the ground and slides across with a loud groan, but Anna doesn't even let him finish that. She leaps with a mighty flap of her wings and stomp-lands on Sora's chest, thrusting her spear up against his throat.

"If I have to kill you," Anna harshly declares, staring with a cold fury, "So be it. You've long crossed that line, but I'm sparing you. Appreciate my mercy because I'd happily end you for trying to kill my friend. Don't make me regret it. You monster."

_Universal Recalibration Systems online._

With those words, a circular platform high in the sky starts lowering itself down by its hundreds of black cables. All the wiring feeds into some massive bank of chaotically-arrayed computers, a dozen screens of equal disarray angled in a quarter circle around a simple table with a simple keyboard.

"Stay put if you want to live," Anna says with a gentle prod of her spear, a tiny trickle of blood coming from Sora's throat. She desummons her weapon and crouches low, kicking off Sora's chest with a mighty flap of her wings. She soars through the air with perfect angelic grace... dark angelic grace. She circles around under the platform while rapidly gaining altitude, her flaps ringing out with an ominous echo. She keeps circling around even as she reaches the platform, continuing a good dozen meters above before suddenly yanking herself upright and dropping straight down in front of the keyboard. That polygon woman Emily saw in her vision and could have sworn she saw on the monitors starts rendering on the screens, looking straight into Anna's eyes. Must be the avatar of Kingdom Hearts itself.

"Are you the Destined Savior?" the avatar asks. The platform still continues to lower itself even with Anna firmly on board.

"Yes, I am," Anna flatly says.

"Prove it," the avatar says. Anna reaches forward and summons her keyblade not as a spear, but as a sword. Just like Riku's original design, mirroring Sora's.

"The Destined Savior shall carry a keyblade," Anna recites, flipping it around and placing it beside the keyboard. The avatar gets drowned out by scrolling fields of text for about ten seconds before blipping back to normal.

"Subject(Jamie Lerquin) = Keyblade Wielder = Destined Savior," the avatar of Kingdom Hearts says in monotone, the screens flickering a little, "Please state your calibration request."

"I want tea and crumpets," Anna says with confidence. The screens flicker as lines of text rapidly type out in a blur of illegible letters and numbers. Several seconds of this go by before the screens blip back to the avatar.

"Granted," the avatar says. Anna leaps in a backflip off the platform and twirls around, resuming her circling. Random-looking machines of unknown purpose start rising out of the floor as tubes of orange liquid start turning a greenish hue. Exactly what Anna is looking for. She blips her keyblade back into her hand as a spear and swoops towards the tubes, slashing through them in one graceful pass. She finishes with a toss of her spear at the cluster of rising machines. The weapon explodes in a tilted pillar of dark grey plasma energy, leaving behind a heavy smoke cloud in its wake.

_Warning: System integrity at negative 110.1921%. Rerouting systems..._

All the screens in the entire room flicker off in an expanding wave, hanging a few seconds before more lines of unreadably fast text swarm over them. Emily finally gains the confidence to get off her knees, glancing over to Sora to find... nobody. He's gone. Where did he go? That question answers itself pretty fast as a rapid fire succession of blue energy bolts stream in curves towards Anna. She doesn't even have to try to evade them at first, but Sora catches on and starts leading his target. He must have forgotten his pilot training for a second.

She evades with sudden swerves, but one stray shot almost makes it through. Almost. She reaches aside and summons some kind of brief energy shield that bursts it apart. With her attention to the side, Sora leaps from under with a hundred meter bound and grabs onto Anna's leg with one arm. As both of them suddenly sink from the combined weight, Sora summons his keyblade and jabs towards Anna. She quickly blips her spear and catches the attack, but that distraction proves too much.

Sinking through the air at breakneck speed, both of them crash through the walls of monitors like glass windows. They roll and tumble over each other, Sora never letting go of Anna's leg no matter how much glass tears them both apart. Emily picks up her keyblade and runs towards their path, her mind finally made up. She knows exactly what she's going to do now. The pair's trajectory finally ends just where Emily expected, Sora now on top with both hands gripping Anna's wing stalks. Clumps of black feathers tear off as they slide along the ground, a trail of blood following them. Just as they stop, Sora reaches up, summons his keyblade, and stabs down...

Emily jumps in and stops Anna's execution with only centimeters to spare. Up close and personal, Emily now sees what almost seems like a blue fire igniting Sora's eyes. She always thought it was only Riku that had to worry about losing himself to rage...

"What are you doing?" Sora demands.

"Nobody's dying today," Emily declares. Sora shoves into his keyblade, but Emily diverts it to the side of Anna's head. Close enough to cut a clump of hair.

"All apologies..." Anna says, closing her eyes and coughing up a soft spray of blood. What the... nah. Later. Emily crouches down and shoulder-bashes Sora off. He resummons his keyblade and swipes at her stomach, but some instinctive reflex guides her blade to the rescue. Sora scurries back in some kind of crab walk, shoving himself back up on his feet with weapon at the ready.

"I don't want to fight," Emily says.

"Then get out of my way!" Sora shouts, pointing his keyblade at Emily as he circles around. She moves in to block with keyblade held upright, keeping between him and Anna at all times. It's really a sad sight how quickly Sora decided to try and kill her. Has it really come to such a point where a friendship of so much time can be quickly discarded? How he now views her as just another punching bag for his unguided grief? Emily only hopes she can overcome the legendary wielder of the keyblade, savior of the universe... yeah, right...

_Leave it to me._

Sora suddenly lunges at Emily in the blink of an eye, but instinct preserves her. She jabs her keyblade up to block his, quickly swinging it back down to deflect his follow-up rising slice. Sora keeps slashing and Emily keeps blocking purely on some guiding force for several more slashes, but he's better. He catches just the right angle with one slice, twirls her keyblade down, and stomps it out of her hand. Before Emily gets a chance to so much as think of resummoning, Sora shoves her with his free arm, twirls on his heel, and slices Emily across her stomach with blood splattering all over.

"Aigh!" Emily screams in blinding pain, her nerves spasming all at once. She falls on her rapidly twitching winged back, clutching her soaked belly with both hands. Her keyblade vanishes in a quick flash of polygonal deconstruction, leaving her prone and defenseless. Sora walks over with keyblade loose in his hand. Well, of all the ways Emily could die, she never expected it would be at Sora's hands...

"It will turn out okay," Sora says, walking past Emily, "You'll see."

Sora walks over Emily and continues towards Anna. Emily rolls to try and get up, but her belly hitting the ground sends more shock and pain through her system. Leaves her powerless to watch Sora... walk past an unconscious Anna as well. Instead, he strides to the steel ladder to the platform... oh, no. Hell no. He's going to make that wish. No way Emily can let that happen. Not with her plan. He's going to ruin everything out of staggeringly stupid faith in an obviously faulty system.

"Stop!" Emily shouts to no avail. The sheer horror of that possibility dashes away Emily's pain enough to let her back up. Sora's leaps halfway up the ladder. She thrusts her hand out and sure enough, her keyblade returns to her. Knowing she can get it when she needs it, she tosses it aside. She staggers along towards the ladder, but Sora's already on top. Oh, if only her wings weren't torn, but even if they weren't, they would do nothing. She can't fly nearly as well as Anna...

"Are you the Destined Savior?" asks a monotone female voice. Emily trips a little, but catches herself on a rung of the ladder.

"Yes," Sora says. Emily starts climbing.

"Prove it," the voice says. Emily climbs as fast as she can, practically swinging like a chimp from rung to rung.

"Here's my keyblade," Sora announces. Halfway up. Emily nearly loses her footing mid-climb and swings to a side. Costs her precious time, but she recovers. Only sixty more rungs to go. Fifty. Forty.

"Subject(Sora) = Keyblade Wielder = Destined Savior. Please state your calibration request," the voice says in monotone. Thirty rungs to go. Twenty. Ten.

"I wish the Heartless never existed!" Sora shouts with just two rungs to go. Emily freezes in sheer horror as the crushing defeat overwhelms her. She lost, Anna lost, and once that request processes, Sora and Riku and everybody else in this and every universe has lost. There's no way that-

"Warning," the voice reports, "Segfault error at line 192851294285191951823912941. Rebooting..."

A shudder rumbles through the entire complex as the fusion reactor whines, all the lights flickering off for a brief second. That bought some time, but nothing's stopping Sora from making that wish again. Emily jumps up the last two rungs and lands on the platform with a loud stomp, thrusting her hand out and summoning her keyblade. She rushes Sora as he turns around in confusion, but not fast enough. He parries Emily's blunt-side smack, but she doesn't stop. She bowls right through him and pins him up against the guard rail, both of them locked in place at the blades.

"Why do you defend that... _monster?_" Sora asks.

"You're both wrong," Emily retorts, "I know _exactly_ what I'm going to wish for and I won't let either of you sto-"

Sora knees Emily in the belly, searing pain loosening her stance. He follows up with a headbutt that reopens the cut he so generously left earlier, knocking her into a backwards stagger. Emily catches herself in time to block Sora's sideways slash, but not enough to hold her ground. She stumbles up against the computer terminal, knocking the keyboard off the table and keyblade out of her hand. Stunned and unarmed, Sora slashes horizontally at Emily's head... and stops with the blade just short of cutting the monitor.

"Whoa!" Sora says. He must have realized destroying this machine would be a really bad idea. There's nothing like that behind him to stay Emily's hand, though. She ducks under his still keyblade and grabs his arm, shoulder-tackling him up against the guard rail again. Unfortunately, a quick glimpse down reveals more guests... millions more guests. Lightside Heartless swarm along the catwalks from all corners of the room, most of them several kilometers away and closing. A few stray Shimmers trickle up along the sides of the reactor core, vanishing into the maze of monitors. The room fills with this tick-tacking of their scurrying feet.

"Heartless!" Emily shouts. Sora headbutts her again, this time shattering her nose. Emily loses her grip and staggers away, but a thought comes to mind. Just as Sora readies another slash, she dashes back up against the computer screen. Doesn't work twice, though. He instead holds his keyblade rigid and horizontal in front, dashing forward. King of like a moving baseball bunt. Emily summons her keyblade and blocks vertically with one hand, Sora's momentum knocking her back against the monitor. Locked in place and with Sora too rigid to flow, Emily punches him square in the jaw with all her might. Breaks a few of her knuckles, but sure enough, it knocks him flat on his butt. She can't believe that worked...

"System back online," the avatar announces as it flickers back onto the screen, "Are you the Destined Savior?"

"Yes," Emily says. She skips back as Sora stabs at her, narrowly missing by a centimeter.

"Prove it," the avatar says. While this is where she'd give her keyblade, she still needs it. Sora jumps back onto his feet and recklessly lunges at Emily. The fire's back in his eyes. Speeds him up. Emily desperately deflects each of Sora's rapid-fire slashes, each parry sliding her closer and closer to the guard rail. One slash too many pins her against the rail and another knocks the keyblade out of her hand. Pinned and stunned, Emily can do little but watch as Sora steps back and raises his energetic blue keyblade overhead...

...but he catches himself. The fire in his eyes die down as he apparently remembers the nearby computer. Once again, his hesitation saves Emily from a messy end, but she needs to just finish this as soon as possible. She shoves off the guard rail and quickly circles around Sora, summoning her keyblade and tossing it onto the table. Before Sora can react, she loops both her arms under his armpits and latches onto his back with all her strength. He starts jerking around to try and shake her off, but she holds steady. If she lets go, she's dead and all this will have gone to waste.

One jerk knocks her gaze upward along the dangling cables. Climbing down the cables like a lizard is none other than that gigantic Heartless leader. With skin burnt and white blood dripping by the gallon, ex-Julia still smiles with sharp teeth upon meeting Emily's gaze.

_Mine!_

"Oh, no..." Emily mutters, loosening her grip a little. Sora suddenly bends forward at the hip and elbows into Emily's belly, launching her several meters into the air. He grips his keyblade with both hands and stabs upwards... right through Emily's chest and out her back with a spray of blood. No escape, no misdirection, no last second save: just a sword impaled straight through her most vital organs. No getting out of this one and yet, she doesn't feel anything...

Sora's determined face melts away to reveal only the starkest horror imaginable. While much too late to save his record, the hero that saved the universe finally peeks through the grief and rage. Emily slowly sinks down the keyblade and so horrified is Sora, he doesn't even flinch when the hilt sends another splash of blood across his eyes. He just stands there holding Emily upon his skewer, her eyes locked upon his.

"What have I done..." Sora mutters, frozen in place. Emily and even time itself seem frozen as well for this one horrible moment. Of all the myriad ways she thought she would die, from the fiercest Heartless to the most unfortunate accident to even a soft death by illness, she never thought that her life would be ended by the hands of a friend. Even as Emily's vision blurs, she can still see through the grated floor to the swarm of Heartless below and a reflecting steel panel shows ex-Julia closing in from above. For better or worse, everything's going to end in mere seconds and the only winner today will be the mindless Heartless leader that was once just a faceless bureaucrat...

"Subject(Emily Tennenbaum) = Keyblade Wielder = Destined Savior," the avatar finally says, "Please state your calibration request."

"I wish..." Emily rattles out with what remains of her breath, ex-Julia letting go and dropping towards them, "...that no Celestial Transfers ever came here..."


	87. Gothic Industrial Shoegaze Ambient Rock

_You cheeky little brat..._

Emily survived. She wasn't really expecting it with everything crumbling around her, but she survived. No doubt getting stabbed and presumably crushed under ex-Julia's fat ass explains why she has yet another memory gap, but she definitely feels alive. She feels... pretty good, actually. No pain, no aches, no fatigue, not even any gravity holding her down. Feels almost silly to keep her eyes closed even a second longer.

She opens up to find herself crouched on her knees in some kind of empty space. Not outer space, but a total void as far as the eye can see. Lucky for her that she's on a floating platform made of some kind of glass. Colored light pours up from it, painting a staggeringly complex picture of a hundred Lightside Heartless swarming all over. So cluttered are the milky masses, it takes a second to notice Sora, Riku, Kairi, Chou, Uina, Simon, Mickey, Axel, Xion, and even Emily all struggling to break free from their oppressors. The only person in this portrait not buried under the Heartless is Julia, who instead stands gracefully within a transparent shell of her hybrid Heartless self.

"Behind you," says a male voice. Emily starts to turn around, but a glimpse of a hand stops her. Once again, it seems she has been changed... if subtly this time around. Her skin isn't quite so pale any more and while still just as skinny in fat and muscle, her bones are visible once again. More pressing is the lack of clothing covering her... reduced breasts. In fact, she's back to the visible ribcage that always bugged her so much growing up. That gaunt look that brought accusations of anorexia and made swim class just that much more awkward...

With some unknown person behind her, she covers as best she can with her arms and scoots around to find... that seraph from way, way, way back. The same guy that ushered her into this universe in the first place. He's just as attractive as Emily remembers, but it no longer affects her. It no longer compels her towards shameful lust. He glances down with derision.

"So vain..." the seraph says, summoning a simple white robe on Emily with a snap of his fingers.

"...are you Metadronis?" Emily asks.

"Metadronis... Metatron... Mercury... who cares?" the seraph known as Metadronis says, "It's not about me, but the hell of a paradox _you_ just threw at us."

"...oh, yeah," Emily mutters, rising up to her feet, "My wish. Did it work?"

"What do you think?" Metadronis asks. Emily glances around at what is no doubt the Celestial Transfer system. The in-between stop of one universe to another. Doesn't look too promising.

"Well..." Emily starts, "I wished that no Celestial Transfer ever went to that universe... I think. I'm standing here outside the universe, so... maybe? Maybe not?"

"Kingdom Hearts tried to grant your wish," Metadronis sighs, "The wish that neither you nor anyone else ever went there, but if you never went there, how could you make that wish to never go there?"

"Sora got an error when he wished the Heartless never existed..." Emily mutters, "...I'm dead, aren't I? The Heartless must have killed me like they did back home..."

"Kingdom Hearts tried to grant your wish," Metadronis repeats, "Even with half the place destroyed, rampant corruption in the programming, and a paradox in its cycle, it still tried to grant it... or whatever twisted thing it thought you wished for. It tried to rewrite time all the way back to your friend Jamie and it screwed up. It completely and thoroughly wrecked every last law of physics across not just the Kingdom Hearts universe, but every direct branching universe as well. Realities got erased, singularities run rampant, and Scientology became the new world order in at least one universe. Mass hysteria, let me assure you. Maleficent only _wishes_ she could have done so much damage."

"...is Riku okay?" Emily asks. Metadronis scoffs at those very words. The kind of scoff a rude stranger would make at a precocious child that showed him a finger painting.

"Forget Riku," Metadronis says, "His existence should be impossible with what you just did, but who knows? Lots of people fell right out of the timeline. It's all a giant headache and it's all because of _you_."

"...I'm sorry?" Emily says sheepishly, "I mean, it's just... what was the _point_ of all this?"

"The point?" Metadronis asks with a squint.

"Well..." Emily continues, "I had a destiny, right? Was my destiny to destroy that universe?"

"You never had any destiny," Metadronis says, "Ever. Period. You're just as meaningless as anyone else that found themselves dumped in that hell hole."

"Come on..." Emily says, "Everybody kept saying I had a destiny and look what happened."

"We suggest everybody has a destiny," Metadronis explains, "Everybody. It's so they'll do audacious, near-suicidal things with total confidence. Sure, most end up dead, but nothing happens if they don't try."

"But I changed the universe," Emily counters.

"And none of that has anything to do with destiny," Metadronis says, "You really think you had some super secret destiny to change the universe? Some random girl that fell into a singularity? Ha. You are one of countless millions that we passed through. Countless millions that were all led to believe they could change the universe and in some ways, they did. They paved the way for others to build their future and everything simply... coalesced when you took the stage. You are the result of a hundred billion happenstance circumstances working out just right and that's why your story is the one that will be repeated. The one told to so many others... if only over the internet."

"But I'm nobody," Emily says, "I'm nothing. How could some loser girl like me ever do something like this without a destiny to guide me?

"I don't know," Metadronis says with a shrug, "Looking back at Mundane Eurasian Earth, was it the destiny of George W. Bush to assume office? Or was it simply that smarter men... significantly smarter men saw a certain something within him that could get him elected? Perhaps it could be that Jamie saw something within you? Would you believe it to be your destiny because somebody greater than you gave you a chance and guided you along?"

"...that's the whole idea of destiny, isn't it?" Emily says, "Somebody greater than you making sure you play your part... you gave me the Celestial Tint, right?"

"I gave that to a hundred others," Metadronis admits, "Half of them died from the overload and all but two of the other half lost their marbles very quickly. Only you and Jamie ever made anything of yourselves and even then, Jamie failed in the end. It's all you."

"I refuse to believe that," Emily somberly sighs. Why would so much about fate and destiny be thrown at her if it had no meaning? Why would Yen Sid be so apt at predicting the future if they weren't genuine cosmic concepts?

"Believe what you want," Metadronis shrugs, "The whole world's a stage. You can either choose to believe there's some greater cosmic director forcing us to follow a script or that we're all making this up as we go along. Again, it's only because things worked out just right out of so many possibilities that makes this a story worth repeating. Believe what you want, but rest assured that I nor anyone else in my organization ever intervened to make things happen the way they did. Maybe Kingdom Hearts did, but do you really _want_ to believe that you're a talentless loser and it took a rampant, malfunctioning machine mistaking you for a hero to make anything of you?"

"I don't _want_ to believe it," Emily mutters, "I just know it to be true."

"I'm not arguing," Metadronis says with another shrug. Emily opens her mouth, but what can she really say to that? Coy remarks like that only inspire frustration, but she's smarter than to anger him. He's in control of this pocket universe and he could probably end her existence on a whim... what is going on, anyway?

"Am I dead?" Emily asks again.

"Not any more than the last time you saw me," Metadronis says, "If it makes you feel better, only the strong-willed were saved. You are quite literally one in a trillion: a person of great potential for changing the future and with your new experiences, that's just what you're going to do in this readjusted multiverse."

"Why are you suddenly singing my praises?" Emily asks, the shift in tone catching her off-guard, "I mean... you were so... rude to me last time."

"What of it?" Metadronis retorts, "I have good days, I have bad days... it's my immortal life. I never saw you before and you have no clue how many people we cycled through our system to no effect. It's like a retail job: we see so many people so briefly and most of them are entitled little gits that treat us like garbage. I had no way to tell you'd be the one to do something ballsy versus, say, Dana Billett... what happened to her, anyway?"

"I don't know," Emily admits, "Was she Mint? She talked about bullying me, but so many people hated me... probably still do hate me. If you're talking about a blonde girl, green dress, forms green crystal stuff out of thin air, then yeah, she's dead... I hope... I wish..."

"She wasn't even supposed to be here, yet, from what I hear, she got further than most," Metadronis says, gesturing outwards to the void, "Come, walk with me."

"Okay..." Emily says, walking alongside the mysterious man. It doesn't seem like there should be a whole lot more to this pocket universe and sure enough, she is proven right. The two stop just short of the edge, gazing into the vast void spanning all around them.

"Seriously, though..." Emily mutters, "What was the point of all this?"

"The point?" Metadronis asks again in that coy tone.

"You know... the moral," Emily says, "What was I supposed to learn through all this?"

"So like a human to look for a narrative to your life," Metadronis sighs, "Thinking you're part of some closed causal loop of acts, episodes, setups, climaxes, and blunt moralistic themes. It's in your nature to desire a simple but greater meaning to it all. It figures since that's what this universe was where you came from. Why, one guy I talked with not that long ago said he was going to turn everything he knew into a video game some day after he makes it big as an artist."

"...Nomura came from here?" Emily says with disbelief, "Really?"

"I guess he did," Metadronis says with a shrug, "I have this guide that a man gave me. It told me to send this 'Nomura' to 1988 Japan, so... there you go. You now know as much as I do."

"There's a guide?" Emily asks, frustration getting to her, "Seriously, stop being coy about whether or not I have a destiny."

"It was a guide clearly written after the fact," Metadronis continues, "Although... it's a closed loop ontological paradox, so maybe it _was_ divine mandate? Your guess is as good as mine. I can't give you the answers you seek."

"I just don't get how a friggin' angel could ever say there's no such thing as fate..." Emily mutters, glancing upon him with a squinted eye. Metadronis stares at her blank-faced for a good several seconds. What?

"I'm no angel," Metadronis says with an uncharacteristic chuckle, "I'm just whatever inspires awe in your eyes."

Down below in the void, a bunch of comets light up the darkness. Streaming points of light darting across the black as a spherical object pierces the veil. It almost appears as a planet, but it is too small. Much, much too small. If it is a planet, then it must be a simulation of one rather than the real thing: a hologram. It must be what the not-angel has in mind.

"...so..." Emily mutters, "What now?"

"What now?" Metadronis parrots. This is getting really old.

"You said there's going to be more I have to do," Emily says, "And I still don't have a destiny?"

"Don't think of it as a destiny," Metadronis says, "Think of it more as... being qualified for a particular job. The experiences you accumulated make you perfect for your role in this reborn realm. It is time for you to design your universe."

"Maybe you can tell me what job that is?" Emily prods.

"You'll figure it out," Metadronis says in that knowing tone. Typical.

"Do I get to choose my body this time?" Emily asks.

"Nope!" Metadronis chirps.

"Great," Emily says, "Just... do whatever you want with me... I wonder if magically transforming a person against their will is just assault or if it's also rape..."

"...well, _anyway_," Metadronis backpedals, proving the R word can even affect most-assuredly-not-angels, "We can't change your form because of your stunt, so what comes out is who you are. Believe me, with you indirectly freeing me from my old duties, I'd do anything you want, but my hands are tied. All I can do is answer any of your questions before you fall back into your world."

"...are my friends alive?" Emily asks hopefully.

"I'm not sure," Metadronis admits, "I've only cycled through about six thousand people and it's not like I have your Facebook friendlist in the first place, but I met one girl that stood out. Pink haired, dolly, kind of a hybrid butterfly. She asked about you, so I humanized her and sent her to your old world. No clue when she popped out, but she might be waiting for you."

"...Chou?" Emily says in disbelief, "Really? But I saw her die..."

"You negated a whole _ton_ of things back there," Metadronis says.

"But what about the Matriarchy?" Emily asks.

"Negated," Metadronis responds.

"The Yeo?" Emily asks.

"Negated," Metadronis responds.

"UCoP?" Emily asks.

"Negated," Metadronis again.

"Maleficent?" Emily again.

"...you don't want to know," Metadronis says, "Just... forget everything you think happened and focus on what you're going to make happen."

"I don't know what that is..." Emily says, "...did you meet a white-haired boy?"

"You're going to have to be more specific than that," Metadronis says with a chuckle. The streaming stars below start bombarding the planetary hologram, bursting like harmless fuchsia fireworks across the surface. The kind of fuchsia that compliments so well with black.

"...nevermind," Emily says, remembering that he told her to 'forget Riku', "Just... tell all the white-haired boys from now on that... Kiko says she's sorry... or something."

"I can't make a promise like that," Metadronis says, "But I'll keep you in mind if anybody else from the UCoP era asks about a blue-haired assassin."

"Thanks," Emily sighs. Not really a whole lot of wiggle room with a dodgy statement like that. It's not like she really expects a whole lot to come of that since if she really did negate everything, perhaps Riku wasn't even born in the first place? Kind of a creepy thought, but if Chou is alive, why wouldn't he be as well?

"...well, time's up," Metadronis says, turning to face Emily and unexpectedly shaking her hand, "It was a pleasure working with you. You did good, kid."

Metadronis suddenly releases Emily's hand, the ground shattering under her feet. She falls, falls, falls towards the ever widening hologram as hundreds more shooting stars drench the surface in sparks. Just as the image starts defining itself with dotted cities and swirling clouds, one stray shooting star collides with Emily and whites out her vision with a flash.

* * *

**.**

* * *

And once again, ad infinitum, Emily comes to in an unfamiliar place. Sure, she hasn't opened her eyes yet, but the very air is foreign to her. The gravity, the surfaces, the proportions: everything. The weight of her arms, legs, chest, and belly... recessed belly from what she can tell. It sinks below her ribcage, but that doesn't concern her quite as much as the other side of her body. She feels some kind of soft satin garment around her chest to her shoulder blades, but the the rest of her back down to her waist is exposed to the harsh sidewalk. An asphalt that irritates every last centimeter of her skin and feathers... wait a second...

She opens her eyes to that night vision burn, but a combination of the sunset and the shadows of a pair of gawking teens let her off easy.

"She's awake!" says a boy of about sixteen in a loose black suit. Something black, black, black, and slightly grey over his white button shirt. Thick silver chains of crosses and crucifixes show less a fascination with Christianity and more of one for the macabre. Very old fashioned, gloomy, and mystical. Goes well with his white dyed hair and blood-red eyeliner.

"I see," a girl of about seventeen says sarcastically. She also shows a fondness for black, but she favors skintight, sleeveless leather over loose formalwear and fishnets from the elbow down on only one arm. Not that she's built like a supermodel or anything, but her lanky figure feeds well into a starved image. Something not so much anorexic as ghostly, with streaks of blood red on her face and hair that look almost self-inflicted.

"Where am I..." Emily mutters, squinting her eyes at the two, "...have I woken up on the planet of the goths or something?"

"Nope," the girl says, forcing a hand to her face to push back an ashamed chuckle, "Just the Hometown Central Park."

"Is she okay? Come on, guys! We gotta _go!_" protests a boy in the distance, a car horn honking twice. Some song from the radio blares... and Emily even recognizes who it is for a change. Davey Havok of AFI, but it's a song she doesn't recognize. Funny... she once had all of their albums and singles and everything. Only had to pirate one or two rarities. This curiosity is all the more reason for Emily to get up and ask. She tries to push herself up, but so much soreness comes crashing back all at once. Neither arm nor wing can lift her off the ground.

"Here, let me help," the boy says. Both he and his friend that happens to be a girl each grab Emily's arms and yank her back up to her feet. Sure enough, this is a Central Park of some kind, but she's not convinced it's Hometown. Perhaps it is the months away on her working vacation to another universe, but she never really spent much time appreciating nature even before she left. The song in the background builds to a crescendo in that grand AFI tradition:

_Anything!  
I'd tear out my eyes... for... you, my dear  
Anything!  
To see everythiiiing that you do_

"Come on, Steve," the girl says with an irritated look over her shoulder, "At least turn that noise off while we talk."

"Hurry it up!" Steve protests, turning the song off. Doesn't take but a refocus of Emily's eyes to see a dull green minivan parked curbside about ten meters down the street from her. What little of Steve that can be seen through the sun-basked windshield doesn't look very gothic... AFI and goth. She gets it now. It's a connection Emily never really thought of, but it makes sense. Of course, Jamie always insisted gothic rock is just gloomy punk, but then again...

"What was he playing?" Emily asks.

"A Fire Inside," the girl says in a mock-pretentious voice, rolling her eyes in exasperation.

"I know that," Emily says, "I recognize Davey, but... what song was that?"

"Something off their last album a few years ago," the girl sighs, "Who cares? They're mainstre-"

"She's fine! Let's go!" Steve shouts, scooting up the ten meters to get right beside the group and laying on the horn. With the flat vertical side windows reflecting so well, Emily can now see her full self... and it worries her. Not only is she still winged, but she still has that banshee white hair and dark Victorian dress. Just like in the old universe, but this is supposedly Hometown. How is that even possible? Angel wings are biologically impossible. The muscle structure just can't allow it. Her 8th grade teacher spent a whole week discussing that and there's no excuse of 'this is Kingdom Hearts' or 'Axel the super-genius idiot figured it out' to fall back upon...

"How can you see a _fallen angel_ like this and shout 'let's go'?" the boy asks, a subdued glee in his eyes, "You've read my poetry: you know this can only be the start of a truly _dark_ adventure!"

"She's no angel," Steve says with irritation, "She's just cosplaying for the concert like you guys."

"Pay him no mind," the boy says with a brush-off hand motion, "Mundanes like him don't _get_ it. So... I need a saga. What's your saga?"

"It's songs for the deaf," Emily finishes absentmindedly, "You can't even hear it... sorry. It's just... it's all so much. I just... I... don't..."

"Are you okay?" the girl says, moving in a little as if to catch a faint, "We could take you with us. I mean... it's way sold out, but-"

"Then let's get _moving_ already!" Steve cuts off, the car softly beeping and side door sliding open on its own. Nifty feature...

"I should be fine," Emily says, looking around at the vaguely-familiar area, "Do you know where Laurel Avenue is?"

"It's a few blocks thataway," the girl says, pointing the opposite direction.

"We are _not_ driving her!" Steve protests.

"I'll walk," Emily says, unintentionally cutting the girl off.

"Before you go," the boy says, "If you ever want to talk, be my muse, anything, my deviantART is Byron91280. I want to hear your saga!"

"I'm sure you do," the girl sighs with a roll of her eyes.

"Hey!" 'Byron91280' says playfully, "You know you're the only one that could ever slay me."

"Move it!" Steve urges, "We're going to miss Heart of Silence! Five hundred bucks a tick-"

"We get it already!" the boy shouts back, backing away towards the car without looking away from Emily, "Seriously, look me up. I'll be waiting."

"Those are some _incredible_ prosthetics, by the way," the girl says with an approving gesture, "Very fluid. I'm jealous that you can rock the fallen angel look like that."

"Thanks..." Emily mutters. Well, she now remembers enough about this area to get back home. No time to waste.

* * *

**.**

* * *

It doesn't take too long for Emily to find her way back home. Past the decaying greenhouse pools, fitness centers, and other unused perks for living in these prefabricated communities. It seems the money that keeps those places clean has dried up while she was away or the janitor's union went on strike or something. Still, even with a bunch of houses for sale in her neighborhood, her home looks immaculate. Mowed grass, healthy flowers, a shiny new Lexus sedan in the driveway. Better than ever before. Almost makes her want to rush right in, but she knows better. It's not like she can hide that she's a mutant freak of nature now, so it's only natural she should figure out a way to break this gently. The first words out of her mouth are vital.

"Hi, mom, dad..." Emily says, staring at her reflection in the polished silver door knocker, "...no... hey, mom, dad... I'm sorry I left but... no, I didn't leave willingly... I'm sorry I made you all worry, but... I... had to save the universe... a different universe... nah... hey, mom, dad, I'm sorry I made you all worry, but I was... having some... adventures... misadventures... no... hey, mom, dad, I'm back and... I've grown... no... hey, mom, dad, look at me... you've always called me your little angel and... now I am... no, that's not-"

The door suddenly swings open to reveal... a middle-aged Japanese man in a business-casual outfit. White shirt, loose tie, khakis: total office drone. Did Emily's dad bring guests home... but then, why would he be answering the door?

"May I hel..." the man trails off, his passive face turning to a harsh frown, "...oh, for the love of..."

"Er..." Emily says, thinking hard and fast for the proper response. Who the hell is this guy? Where are her parents? What the hell is going on?

"Who's there?" calls out a female voice from the other room. Definitely an Asian accent: can't be her mom.

"It's another Heart of Silence fangirl!" the man shouts back to, presumably, his wife, "Look: your graven idols don't live here any more. They've moved on. I'm sick and tired of you friggin' kids that can't recognize a two year old forum post might just happen to be outdated. Do you _really_ think multi-platinum radio superstars live in the suburbs?"

"I don-" Emily attempts, the man slamming the door in her face. Could it be she has the wrong house... nope. 1604. It's too engraved in her memory to be wrong. There are some things one can never hold in doubt: it would be like her finding out she's not a girl or something. Even if that guy was completely rude, she can't stop here. Where would she go? She smacks the door knocker a few times.

"Go away!" the man shouts, barely audible from two rooms and a closed door away. Well, that sure makes Emily feel welcome. A real part of the community. Still, she can't leave this alone. She crouches down and sneaks around to the dining room window. A peek over the windowsill reveals the rest of the Japanese family sitting around a simple feast of salmon. A loving wife, a seven year old son, and a five year old daughter. Normal, down to earth family. The little girl looks Emily in the eye and points with a smile on her face.

"Look, mommy!" she says in a precocious voice, "A bird!"

"Hikari, take the kids to your room," the man quickly orders, picking up a cell phone with one hand and a steak knife with the other, "We're calling the police! Don't even _think_ of it!"

However, this man shows way less restraint than he expects of Emily and rushes towards the window with knife at the ready. That's as good a sign for her to get far, far away from here. She quickly dashes across the yard as the windows swing open, jumping right over the bushes and narrowly missing a passing car. Well, she went to the one place she thought she could find sanctuary and it turns out to be gone. Now what?

* * *

**.**

* * *

With nowhere else to go, Emily finds herself back at ye olde Eighths and Sharps. That terrible club of pretentious dolts that don't really fit any particular definition. Beatnik? Hipster? Mod? The usual crowd defies a simple label, really. Jamie always did hang out with kind of a weird crowd that could appreciate both Nine Inch Nails and Fall Out Boy at the same time...

Today, however, seems to be goth day. Gloomy female crooning of a wispy, breathy kind over synth-electro-acoustic instrumentation blares over the P.A. system and, surprisingly enough, it isn't Amy Lee. Must be a live performance since it comes across as raw, emotional, amateurish in the sound mix, and there's this weird tone to the whole thing: a sense that it's not their usual material and they're reinterpreting somebody else's song:

_She spreads herself wide open to let the insects in.  
She leaves a trail of honey to show me where she's been.  
She has the blood of __**reptile**__ just underneath her skin.  
Seeds from a thousand others drip down from within._

Very romantic. Emily sits on a stool at the 'bar' with a couple empty cups of cappuccino to keep her company... cappuccino she bought with a pickpocketed wallet. Funny how her most blatantly illegal skills turn out to be the best ones, but it's pretty easy when all eyes are on her back.

She ignores the gawking teens by pretending to pay attention to the televisions. They prove that there's something for everyone by playing some kind of alternative subculture news show. Doesn't really seem very different from the regular news, but rather than business suits, the anchors have dyed hair, ostentatious scene outfits, and, very rarely, totally hip slang straight out of the nineties. CNN must be quaking in their boots.

"The Ocean City Stadium set a new attendance record just a few minutes ago..." the anchor with half a face of piercings says. Boring. She only wishes Mr. Larkson was here rather than 'off having fun at the stadium' like the front sign claims. He always has some lively conversation and the perky goth girl serving up the coffee seems to be anything but when it comes to Emily. Even with so much bright pink clothing and dolly make-up, she can't muster up so much as a smile in Emily's presence. Instead, she keeps staring at her wings from behind the other side of the center bottle stand. As if Emily doesn't notice even from the corner of her eyes. Typical.

"Hey, miss..." says an apprehensive boy from behind. Emily flicks her empty cup onto the bar and turns around to face this intruder. The boy, a rather shy looking emo kid in tight jeans, thick glasses, and a grey hoody, backs down upon meeting her gaze. He doesn't even look like a boy... well, it's as a wise woman once said: 'you free your mind in your androgyny'.

"What?" Emily says.

"I mean no disrespect..." the boy says, blushing as he looks away, "...but... can I touch... I mean..."

"You mean these?" Emily says, spreading to her full wingspan. Murmurs erupt from all the pocket cliques at their tables and couches. Again, as if Emily can't hear them.

"I mean... if it's okay..." the boy says, breathing heavily. Of course, the tight jeans betray something else about his thoughts, but Emily doesn't care any more. He's too shy to try anything distasteful, much less in a crowded place like this.

"Go ahead," Emily sighs, bending forward at the hip, "Cop a feel."

"Thank you," the boy says, hesitating a few seconds before stroking near the stalk, "...wow. They feel so... _lifelike_..."

"I'm glad you approve," Emily sighs. She glances around at the other gawking teens, most of them averting their gaze from her's. The boy gives an unintentional massage as he feels the entire width of both wings, taking much, much too long. Way past any kind of comfort zone. Just as Emily starts considering a shove, he finally backs off on his own.

"Thank you," the boy says with a kneel of respect.

"Tell your friends while you're at it," Emily scoffs, retracting her wings and spinning back to the bar. Sure enough, perky goth is right there staring, but she quickly looks away.

"Another on the house," she mutters, sliding a cup over and quickly walking to another customer. What is it with all this shyness around here? Surely, they can't actually believe she's an angel. Yeah, it would be the correct assumption...sort of, but she's not exactly in Medieval Europe here. It's the 2000s, body modification has reached new heights, and she's in a club that embraces the bizarre. Surely, they can't be that convincing.

"...they call her The Dark Sorceress," the metal-faced anchorman says, "Some say she truly delves into the arcane arts, others say she's a master tactician that leads whole squadrons into elaborate death traps, and many even argue that she doesn't exist and serves only as an audacious bogeywoman made up by a United States that ran out of excuses for war... but no matter what you think, she is... by far... the most _fascinating_ terrorist leader to ever grace the earth."

Emily's ears pick up with that description. Not really because she cares about what's happening in Heat Stroke Central, but because of the reference to magic. Even a far-out news program like this must have a really, really good alibi to so much as even suggest the supernatural. The show cuts to a poor-quality video feed from, well, an African village of some kind. Desert, sand worn, needs about forty years of catch up to first world standards. Cars parked along the street are all cheap Soviet knockoffs of the mid century and there are even antennae arrays on top of the buildings. Not that it's very clear with all the jitter.

"Coalition forces caught up with 'International Enemy No. 1' in Somalia last Thursday," the anchorman narrates as, indeed, some soldiers walking alongside an open-air HMMWV with a heavy machinegun on top drift into view, "The shocking footage you're about to see is unedited, undoctored, and in exactly the form as when it was leaked. Whether you decide you just saw elaborate booby-trapping or real, undeniable magic is a decision you'll have to make for yourselves."

Suddenly, the soldiers all spring to action, shouting orders and staking a perimeter with assault rifles at the ready. The filmer runs up behind the HMMWV with a nausea-inducing bobbing motion ala the Bourne series and plants the camera over the edge. Still nothing of interest in view, but the constant panning shows a certain desperation: as if this terrorist leader has never been caught on camera before and this guy wants to make history.

"There she is!" shouts a soldier. The camera finally rests upon a bombed out building, half of it collapsed to reveal the framework and exposing the filthy hovels within. Standing about four stories up with her back turned is a tall, skinny woman in a flowing black robe. Uncombed, disheveled black hair streams down to her lower back, the frayed ends and clumping visible even through the heavily compressed video feed. She holds what appears to be a black walking stick loose in one arm, her other dangling limp by her side. She doesn't look like a terrorist leader so much as she does a mourning noblewoman.

"Call it," orders somebody off-camera.

"But-" another attempts.

"She won't give in," the first retorts, "Just _do it!_"

"This is the United States Armed Forces!" booms a loudspeaker with ugly audio crackling, the woman still not reacting, "We have you surrounded! Reinforcements both ground and air are en route from all directions! Surrender to us or we will _open fire!_"

Seems a little overkill for a lone, unarmed woman, but she shows no fear. Her hesitation comes across more as a gesture of mercy; a nonverbal way of letting the army back down on its own accord. After a few seconds of more scurrying and chatter from the soldiers, the woman sighs and turns to look over her left shoulder. Her greasy hair streams down her sharp face, combining with the jagged pixelation to obscure her age. Her walking stick comes further into view to reveal a dark green orb the size of a softball on top. It almost seems to be glowing... again, what's the big deal with this woman?

"No," she breathes with a fierce frown, a yellow glint shining from her left eye. Dozens of click-clacks from soldiers slamming off their safeties fill the air.

"Fire at will!" orders a soldier, but they still don't get the first move. The woman twirls on a heel and slams her sceptre down into the floor. A loud explosion that peaks with an ugly clipping noise echoes through the air. The camera zooms back to show a dust cloud and a couple civilian bodies strewn in front of the perimeter. The squadron all duck for cover behind the parked cars and alleyways while they lay down a volley of suppressive fire, the cameraman backing a few parked cars away from the HMMWV. Chunks of building burst apart in puffs of dust and asbestos, but even with so many bullets sent her way, the woman remains unharmed. It's hard to tell from such a low resolution and jittery grip, but it almost looks like sparklers going off in front of her.

With another gesture, a deep black explosion detonates from an alleyway. More bodies fly out, gruesomely scorched and dismembered. A soldier leaps up onto the HMMWV and yanks the machinegun around, the dozen rounds a second tearing a path through the building. The woman in black gestures at the vehicle before the line of bullets reaches her and just like that, an explosion detonates underneath that flips it upside down onto two nearby cars. The still-alive gunner tries to struggle out from under the crushing vehicle, but with another gesture, flames engulf the toppled HMMWV. The camera lingers on the burning corpse just a bit too long for FCC standards.

"Where's that god-damned air strike?" shouts a panicked soldier off-screen amidst a percussive set of explosions. The camera pans to a nearby highrise that is tilting like a card house towards the group. The remaining soldiers run from the incoming mass of steel and cinderblock, the cameraman following behind with more nausea-inducing bobbing. While the video's bad quality makes the small details dubious, it almost appears as if a twisting black energy string swerves through the air towards the front-most group. It detonates with another fire-less explosion that flings bodies away like rag dolls, the cameraman knocked down and lens cracked by a marine not even in his twenties. Poor kid.

Just as the deafening crash of the building shakes the ground, some heavy tanks roll in from around the street corner. All this manpower and weaponry to kill one single person seems a bit much, but whatever the hell is going on seems to definitely warrant it. The cameraman picks himself back up and turns to face the woman in black. She's still standing there resolute even as tank shells stream through the air and... bend in sharp detours to detonate anywhere but where she's standing. Some even bounce right back at the tanks. Just... what?

The woman finally notices the cameraman amidst all her gesturing and the explosions that result; something he realizes because he quickly zooms in on her fierce face. She stares with those yellow glinting eyes right through the cameraman's soul... the soul of anybody viewing this video, in fact. Truly unsettling. With her free arm, she slowly raises her hand and points a finger at the cameraman. The camera jitters as some coughing and hacking peaks the audio with that clipping noise. After a few seconds, both camera and operator clump onto the ground, the frame tilted to the side and his arm flopping into view.

A distant high pitched whine chimes in from above, a sonic boom traveling with it. Whooshes herald the coming of several missiles, zipping so fast as to be little more than a blur. Not like one can really appreciate that because it doesn't even take a second for a dozen synchronized explosions to carpet the whole building in flames and smoke. There's just no way anybody could ever survive something like that, but then... why preface this video as if she's still alive?

After a minute of subsiding aftershock dying down to silence, the woman walks right out of the smoke cloud unharmed. No blood, no cuts, not even any soot on her skin or dress. One can only assume that the whole squadron must be dead because the silence remains. No gunshots, no cannon rounds, not even any panicked shouts. She walks straight towards the camera, a wave dismissing a patch of fire in front of her. She stops just a step away and picks it up, flicking the dead arm off and bringing it uncomfortably close to her harsh, scarred face.

"You know what we want," the woman coldly speaks, "And you know trying to capture us is futile. Send us soldiers, we will send you heroes. There is no placating us. No negotiation. No chance for a peaceful co-existence. We will not rest until you give in or there is _nothing left of us_."

With that statement resonating through the air, she flings the camera aside. During the single second left in the machine's life, it captures a few frames of burnt out tanks and countless dead soldiers strewn about. A perfect final second before the camera crashes against a brick wall, static ending the video.

The screen blinks back to the two anchors, both sitting glazed-eyed in their seats. The only proper reaction to a video like this, but after all Emily has been through, it doesn't really faze her. Sure, the thought that her troubles have followed her here are a little unnerving, but she's not exactly obligated to take them on or anything. That's what the world's military forces are for. After a few seconds and a muffled voice from off-screen, they both put their announcing faces back on.

"So..." says a female anchor with a bright green dye job, "What do you make of this, John?"

"Fake," the pierced boy named John says without a second's hesitation, "Totally fake. We've all seen what Hollywood can do. The special effects in this aren't on par with _Battle L.A_."

"You saw _Battle L.A._?" prods the female anchor playfully.

"Regardless..." John says with a shifty face, "I don't know if I feel more ashamed at them spending our tax dollars on horror movies like this or that they skimped so much on the special effects. Seriously, at least have the balls to go all the way. What do you think, Cheryl?"

"I think it's real," Cheryl says, "I mean... why would they fake something like this? I know the government thinks we're idiots, but even _they_ don't think we'll accept magic."

"You think it's magic?" John prods with a smirk.

"Either it's magic," Cheryl continues, "Or she has technology unlike anything we've ever seen... and didn't somebody once say something about 'sufficiently advanced technology'?"

"Clarke..." John mutters, his face suddenly going shifty again, "...well, regardless, the death toll in encounters with The Dark Sorceress and her organization is now estimated to have gained a fifth digit with that battle. We don't know how she does it or how they became so powerful in only a year, but she's kicking our asses out there!"

"But in brighter news!" Cheryl cheerfully announces, "She's not the only woman to set a new record recently! Ticking past the eight million sales mark only an hour ago is the debut album of dreamy Hometown quartet Heart of Silence and it hasn't even been a year! Watch out, Guns N' Roses, because _somebody_ has a bigger appetite for the debut sales record!"

Something gets in Emily's eyes and her rapid blinking flashes something pink at the corner of her vision. She looks to the side to find the not-so-perky girl standing only a meter away staring. Just staring. While she blushes bright enough to rival her hair, she can't be too bashful about it if she's not even trying to hide any more.

"Yes?" Emily says, staring back with eyelids drooped. The pink girl hyperventilates upon hearing that voice, her cheeks flushing just a bit more. Takes a few seconds of creepy breathing before she gets a word out.

"Anno..." the girl says, looking down to the bar, "I'm... er... sorry if I... sorry if... I... you... you look kind... kind of familiar..."

"Do I..." Emily sighs.

"I don... I..." the girl stammers, turning her head from Emily, "It's just... is... are you... ki-"

"Hey, Miss," says that boy from earlier. Mr. Androgyny, no doubt back to cop another feel. Well, if the pink perky goth is going to shrink into the bar, it's only merciful of Emily to turn away from her as well.

It seems he took her sarcastic suggestion seriously because sure enough, he brought his friends. Five more emo kids, with that pouty, wimpy, feminine look for both boys and girls. Especially the boys. If she hadn't spent quite a lot of time amongst Jamie's crowd, she would never be able to pick them apart. All of them look simultaneously nervous and excited: as if they really are convinced she's an angel.

"Yes?" Emily prompts.

"Er..." Mr. Androgyny... the original Mr. Androgyny says, "...it's just... er... we..."

"We think you're so cool!" one of the girls enthusiastically shouts, a bunch of other people turning their heads towards Emily, "I want to touch your wings!"

"Me, too!" says a boy... or girl. Hard to tell.

"Hey, me first!" playfully says a boy... or girl... boy... girl... definitely a girl. Her eyes are too far forward.

"Who told you guys I _want_ people feeling me up?" Emily asks, frowning at her crowd of admirers. They look around at each other in slight confusion before going back to cheer mode. A stranger to the culture would find their happiness odd, but Emily knows that the 'full spectrum of emotions' that grants them their name includes positivity.

"You said to 'tell my friends'..." the first Mr. Androgyny says.

"It was sar-cas-m," Emily spells out, "You know... I don't actually mean what I'm saying?"

"Cheer up, goth girl!" a boy that sounds like a girl says, "It's like our Lady Angela said: there's no reason for the tribes to fight!"

"Yeah, lighten up!" says a girl, "You wouldn't dress up like _that_ if you didn't want the attention, would you? Why, darling, you look _sublime_!"

"It's just part of your outfit," says another girl, "You don't think we're _dirty_, do you?"

"It is _not_ part of my outfit," Emily protests, spreading her wings out with a loud flap, "These are real, honest-to-god wings!"

"...they are?" says a boy. Emily slides off her stool and turns her back to the crowd.

"Do you _really_ think prosthetics are _this_ good?" Emily asks, flexing her wings as far forward as possible so her admirers can appreciate all the sinew and stretch marks where wing and muscle meet.

"...yes?" a girl says doubtfully, "I mean... I may be Wiccan, but even _I_ accept that the spirit world can never manifest in the physical... can it? Can it really?"

"Yeah..." says a boy, "I was just a neopagan for fun and to piss off my Catholic parents, but... are you _really_ an angel?"

"I wish," Emily sighs, relaxing her wings and turning to face her awe-struck audience, "I'm no angel. I'm just a girl with wings that... had some adventures in a magical alternate dimension and... got changed into this by some apocalyptic girl that... may or may not have been my best friend gone crazy and... my parents moved out while I was gone and I'm... homeless..."

A statement like that brings forth the deafening silence. Not just silence from the admirers, but from the closer half of the room as well. All this attention thrown Emily's way makes her regret coming to a public place like this. Here, she thought, nobody would bat an eye to such an extravagant display: that she would get to gather her thoughts without everybody staring at her. Then again, a small scale, low price, all ages club like this with tight-budget teenagers as the patrons is not exactly going to have anything close to her level of majesty. It's like wearing Gucci in a homeless shelter.

It's only now that she realizes it would have been smarter to at least try Jamie's house before going somewhere public. She even passed it on the way to this club, but her brain was on auto-pilot... stupid her. Well, she knows just where she's going once she gets out of this situation.

"...I'm sorry," says a girl, tears welling up in her eyes, "I just thought... I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry," echo a few others. The few that aren't dumbstruck. She even hears one of the people not in this group also apologize from afar.

"Do you need a place to stay?" asks a boy, "My brother's got a couch you can crash on."

"Sounds comfy," says someone from behind. Emily looks over her shoulder to find a tall man in a grey business suit. Grey fedora on his blonde hair, a pocket watch chain across his breast pockets, a pair of amber glasses, and a white walking cane. The kind of outfit that makes the person seem kind of unassuming, but deep down, one knows they're always, always, always important. Emily backs away to a side between the group and this man, glancing both over... seems the pink girl vanished. Oh, well.

"Who are you?" asks a boy.

"Petting zoo's closed, girls," the man says with a brushing motion, "Vamoose."

"Who are you..." Emily says, squinting as something clicks in her brain, "...Metadronis? What are you..."

"I figured you could use a helping hand," Metadronis says with a smile, the crowd backing away from him and Emily. It's not quite clear why they aren't standing up to him, but they seem to sense the same thing Emily does. That ethereal, otherworldly aura. If that's the case, then a simple 'vamoose' really does seem like a plausible cause for hesitation.

"I don't know what I'm doing," Emily admits, the group tucking themselves around a table while still watching, "I just... I don't know what I'm doing. My parents are gone and I was too stupid to even look for my only friend before coming here. I just... I don't know what to do."

"So I gather," Metadronis says.

"...was that Maleficent on TV?" Emily asks.

"Pressing issues first," Metadronis says, "You want to find out what your parents have been up to these past three years, yes?"

"...three years?" Emily asks, realizing she really should have pulled a Marty McFly and pick up a newspaper earlier, "But I was only there for..."

"...286 days, two hours, thirty three minutes, seven point zero nine five five three... three seconds," Metadronis finishes upon a glance to his watch, "Time is meaningless when traveling between the realms. We can not only send you anywhere, but any time past, present, or future... at least when the system is working properly. You're lucky we even managed to get you _this_ close to your original time with all the damage your wish caused."

"About my parents..." Emily says, "Where are they?"

"Right now?" Metadronis says.

"Yes, right now," Emily says, "Why even ask that?"

"Just making sure you're ready," Metadronis says, walking over to the bar, "You can stop hiding, dear."

"Where are my parents?" Emily asks again. A thump on the bar precedes the pink perky goth rising up, painfully rubbing her forehead.

"We're heading over to Ocean City Stadium," Metadronis says to the girl, ignoring Emily, "Care to join us?"

"...oh, do I ever!" the pink girl says with balled hands raised in front of her, perking up at the thought. Metadronis smiles and walks over to the bar door, offering his hand as the girl ditches her post.

"Will you get back to the point?" Emily says, irritation starting to fill within her. She speed walks to catch up to Metadronis and the pink girl as they stroll towards the front door.

"All in good time," Metadronis says with a cheerful twirl of his cane as they exit the club, "You've spent the better part of nine months in my company's service. It's only fitting I treat you to a night at the theatre."


	88. Collide

**I strongly recommend checking out the companion playlist on my profile page for this chapter. You'll see where it becomes relevant. I always write with the intent of being self-contained, so if you can't listen to it, don't worry about it too much.**

* * *

Ocean City. City of hopes, dreams, ideas, and... basically Chicago, but given a generic name so the audience can project their local metropolitan area as the setting. Now that's out of the way...

Tonight is a big night for the Ocean City Stadium. Bigger than a football game, bigger than a football playoff, perhaps even bigger than the Super Bowl. Traffic is backed up dozens of kilometers out in all directions, grinding everything from the highway down to the most obscure alleyways to a screeching halt. Even the dozen trains running on a five minute boarding cycle are so overburdened that it took a good hour for Emily, Metadronis, and the pink haired girl that he randomly brought along to even get on this tin can of sardines that struggles to chug along its track. For reasons unknown, he even delayed boarding for two trains to get one that's 'just right'. All this for some rock band... that the all-powerful not-angel insists on seeing...

"Mind telling me why we're going to this concert?" Emily asks, staring into the half-reflective window. The pink girl sits beside her with a shy, bashful face and Metadronis slouches across from them with both arms spread to take up the full bench. He doesn't pay any mind to all the standing people glaring him down.

"You don't pay very good attention, do you?" Metadronis says, smirking.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Emily asks, vaguely insulted.

"Just saying," Metadronis says with a wink. Through this makeshift mirror, Emily glances around at all the people on board. Next to nobody is in just plain, regular clothing. No. Instead, everybody is gussied up in some kind of outrageous fashion statement. Goth, punk, emo, metalhead, new romantic, visual kei, and everything else one can think of, but hardly so segmented. There is spillover between the groups and their ideals, with gothic metalheads, Japanese emo, and even hipster punks. A collection of individuals picking and choosing from a huge palette of fashions and identities. All this brings to mind the question of what the pink girl is going for...

"Say..." Emily says, staring at the pink girl in the window, "Does the name 'Chou' mean anything to you?"

"Are you Kiko?" the girl asks quickly, a perplexed but hopeful look on her face. It's almost as though she waited for this opportunity.

"I'll take that as a 'yes'," Emily says, "I am Kiko... well, my name is not Kiko. It was a fake name because I... thought I was worthless as Emily..."

"You mean it _wasn't_ all a dream?" the girl that must be Chou says with a mix of doubt and optimism on her breath, "I'm not insane?"

"I don't know what you mean..." Emily says, "What are you talking about?"

"After I got chewed to death," Chou explains, her voice a bit too casual, "I was sent to some weird place in space. A really pretty girl came to me, answered all my questions, and sent me here... by the way, thank you so much!"

"My pleasure," Metadronis says with a tip of his hat. Emily turns to stare at him for a second. What is Chou talking about with calling him a 'girl'?

"I was sent here, but nobody believed me," Chou explains, melancholy infecting her voice, "They told me I was crazy. They said I had amnesia, that I was in a fugue state, that everything I knew about myself was some fantasy. They put me in a mental hospital and told me to forget it all. I had to relearn everything before they put me in an orphanage. It was awful. I couldn't prove anything to them. I don't have any of my power any more."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Metadronis comments, "Have you tried recently?"

"No..." Chou says, raising a hand in front of her face. She tilts her head as she tries to will something to happen and sure enough, pink energy starts radiating from within. Her face both literally and figuratively lightens up with this sight, smiling widely at Metadronis.

"Oh my god, thank you!" Chou gushes.

"Don't thank me," Metadronis says with a chuckle, gesturing with his cane, "Thank Emily. It's because of her wish that magic has found its way back to this universe."

"...back?" Emily asks.

"Don't think too hard about it," Metadronis assures, slouching back into his bench with eyes closed. Emily starts to form a retort in her mind, but she realizes the unimportance of that statement. So there was a time of dragons and wizards? Big deal. After all she has been through, the thought that maybe the ancient shamans wielded genuine power holds no weight. Nothing can blow her mind any more.

"Next stop: Malcolm Street," says a voice over the P.A. Doesn't take long for the train to stop at another overcrowded station. The orders of conductors meet with impatient boos and hollers of the teeming crowd. It seems the transit authority didn't think this out very well because the stations are getting more crowded as the train lurches closer to the city. Fewer and fewer people manage to get on at each stop because once the train fills up, only those very few people getting off before the end of the line allow for anyone else to get on. Again, what makes this band so much bigger than even the Olympics...

This batch brings a couple more people than usual. More outrageous fashion statements shuffle through the rows, one or two giving annoyed stares at Metadronis's two seat spread. Out of nowhere, he suddenly raises his cane to block one boy in particular. He's drabbed in red and black skater gear, his brown hair teased up in an aerodynamic swoop... wait a second...

"Care to join us?" Metadronis offers, scooting towards the aisle and patting the newly-empty seat beside him.

"Sure, why not?" the skater boy shrugs, his gaze lingering on Chou, "...hey, Connie."

"Steve," she acknowledges with a warm smile. He sits down with a casual plop, leaning into the window. Seems he likes to gaze in the reflection as well. Catches Emily's gaze for a second through the half-translucent mirror.

"That costume is awesome, by the way," 'Steve' comments with a smile.

"It's not a costume..." Emily mutters, "...does the name 'Sora' mean anything to you?"

"...oh, god," the boy says, grabbing at his forehead, "I can't believe... I just..."

"Wait..." Emily says, realizing something, "You two were in the same mental institute, weren't you?"

"No," Chou says, "Same orphanage."

"...holy crap!" the boy suddenly shouts, looking through his fingers with one eye, "I remember now! Kiko! Chou... oh my god, I can't _believe_ we've known each other all these years and _never_ figured it out!"

"I know!" Chou says with exuberance.

"But..." Sora says as his breathing quickens, his head aching that much more, "It's just... it was all a dream... it just... it _has_ to be... there's no way..."

"Try your magic," Emily suggests.

"Won't work," Metadronis comments, "He doesn't have a keyblade any more... yet."

Before Emily can offer another suggestion or prod that statement, Chou takes the initiative and grabs Sora's shoulder. Soft pink energy flows from her hand into his body, his breathing slowing to a steady pace. His face goes hollow as his jaw slacks, signaling a deep recession into his mind. Chou retracts her hand and allows him to stare blankly through the window. Did Chou just mercy kill him or...

"...I guess we're all mad-boys and -girls," Sora says with a worrying chuckle, his expression still dead. Metadronis slouches into his seat with an innocent stare away from Emily's glance. The look of somebody hiding something, but then again, he's clearly hiding a lot of things.

"So..." Emily says, sorting her priorities, "Maybe you can explain why we're going to this concert?"

"You'll see," Metadronis says with another wink, closing his eyes and tipping his hat. Nice of him to preemptively dodge the follow-up question so quickly...

The train passes into a tunnel, the darkened interior and rhythmic passing of small marker lights giving everything a calming, ethereal effect. No doubt nothing unusual for frequent commuters, but it certainly has been a while since Emily had taken the train. Upon exiting the tunnel, half the people on board flip open their phones and PDAs. As if they might have gotten an email or text message during those forty seconds and they'll die if they don't check it right this second. Do their electronics serve them or do they serve their electronics?

"Next stop: Stadium Plaza," announces a voice over the P.A. system. The crowd erupts in cheers and clapping at the overworked public transit authority safely bringing them to their graven idols. The train shifts uneasily as nearly everybody rushes towards the doors in hope of being the first ones off. One would expect a lot of bickering and fighting from all the collisions, but everybody is surprisingly chill with each other. No animosity between strangers or anything. Emily and company stay seated as the train grinds to a stop by a platform, the throngs of people spilling out into the already overcrowded station. There must be... ten thousand people just in this ten train room alone.

"...oh," Sora says, glancing to Emily, "I remember now. I'm sorry, Kiko."

"For..." Emily prompts.

"Killing you," Sora says, looking away guiltily.

"Oh... I forgive you?" Emily responds, "I mean... it all worked out... sort of... right?"

"Touching," Metadronis says before Sora gets a chance, rising up with a flourish of his cane, "Well, time to go."

Sora and Emily stare at each other for a lingering second, the former shrugging before they follow. They depart the train into the sea of people, the smell of perfume and body odor churning Emily's stomach. Way too many people sweating from all their combined body heat gives this place a balmy, tropical air. Emily pulls her shirt up over her nose, exposing her belly but she doesn't care. Not like any of the people staring at her are going to notice what is forward rather than behind. Already, she can hear the occasional murmur, but it's hard to tell. The transit authority seems to be big Heart of Silence fans as well because the P.A. system blares what is presumably their music down to the masses. Too bad their crap speaker system garbles it all in echo and distortion.

What makes all this so much worse is the jerky, stuttering lead of Metadronis. He keeps stopping, sidetracking, backtracking, and halting the group for no discernible reason. It's not even as though he doesn't know where he's going since all one has to do is follow the flow of the crowd, but it almost seems like he's looking for something.

It takes a good several minutes of painfully slow filtering before they make their way to the lobby to find... even more people filtering even slower than before. So packed is this place, the escalators are disabled and the elevators are all stuck with so many people trying to get in. The heat, smell, and terrible noise is even worse in this room, suffocating Emily in so much human molasses. With the stadium at least four kilometers away and no sign of the crowd thinning at any point, it almost seems futile to try to get there before the concert is long over.

"Is Heart of Silence really _that_ big a deal?" Emily asks. Two nearby strangers turn to face her with exasperation.

"Hell _yeah_, they are!" one of them jubilantly responds. A bunch of others cheer them on. Kind of a pocket incident that taps into the little-seen positive side of mob mentality. Still, one person crosses a line and grabs Emily's wings from behind. Makes her wince, but she holds off.

"Wow!" gleefully says a girl, "These are _amazing!_"

"Chou," Emily says, an absolutely brilliant idea crossing her mind.

"Yeah?" Chou says, turning around. Emily points at the top of a building just barely visible through the pane glass dome of the station's front entrance.

"See that building over there?" Emily asks, "Maybe we could try teleporting ov

And with a disorienting blip and memory gap, Emily finds herself on said platform holding hands with everybody else. Sora seems just as bewildered and Metadronis simply smiles with some knowing look at Emily. Murmurs from below reveal the crowd didn't exactly miss this display, but who even cares any more? When one is already a living, breathing angel of... twilight or something, there's no point trying to hide the magic.

"Aiiii," says a female voice from behind, something sliding off of Emily's back... oh, great, that girl came along.

"I guess you learned to keep your hands to yourself, huh?" Emily asks, turning to face the girl as she sits dumbstruck on the floor. She's a red-headed scenester of subdued fashion, with a dark red vinyl dress and darker red, plaid skirt certainly showing a fondness for the color.

"...oh my god!" the girl says, an ecstatic grin creeping up her face, "You really _are_ an angel! Magic really _does_ exist! Take me with you!"

"I don't really thi-" Emily attempts.

"Of course," Metadronis says with a flourish of his cane, "More transfers, the merrier."

"Transfer?" Emily asks, squinting at the man, "You don't mean..."

"...oh my god!" the girl says, jumping onto her feet, "Are you Kiko?"

"Kairi?" Sora suddenly asks.

"Sora!" the girl says, leaping into his arms and hugging the breath out of him.

"I thought I lost you forever!" Sora spurts through a flood of tears, "What happened?"

"After the ship blew up," Kairi explains, "I found myself in some weird place. I met this guy and he sent me to this planet. I tried to explain who I was, but nobody believed me!"

"Did they put you in a crazy house, too?" Sora asks.

"Yes!" Kairi says, "They wanted to put me in an orphanage, but I ran away today. I thought I could find somebody here that would give me a home, but I never expected I'd run into you guys! I'm so happy!"

"What a friggin' coincidence..." Emily comments, looking away from the couple as they cry into each other's shoulders.

"Is it, now?" Metadronis says with a wink and a tilt of his hat. It takes a good minute or so before Sora and Kairi break apart, turning to the rest of the group.

"We're ready," Sora says. Metadronis leads the group over to the edge facing the stadium. While plenty more high rises block a direct view, the pillar of light is almost blinding even from around the corner. It's kind of like how IMAX adverts say they could shine a spot on the moon with their combined power, but if those are pinpoints, this could cancel a lunar eclipse. The distant thunder of low-end bass and drums softly rumbles through the buildings even so many kilometers away.

"See that fire escape?" Metadronis says, gesturing at a

And another blip brings the group to said fire escape. This sure is disorienting as hell, but skipping past so many blocked-off streets of this overcrowded city is worth every last bobble and stumble. One wonders just how expensive this whole event must be with shutting down traffic around a couple kilometer radius and all the police presence keeping some loony with a steamroller from breaking the Utøya record. What about the residents in this area? Is there some kind of security in place? Because a huge mob like this grants perfect cover for bashing in windows and swiping stuff... then again, how would the person get away unnoticed?

"Shall we?" Metadronis prompts, starting up the stairs. Emily follows along to the top to find a roof-side pool and some neon rave club furnishings. It's hard to tell with the six dozen or so people crawling all over. Most of them are all at the edge gazing down at the stadium, the supernova of light casting them in silhouette. Well, the residents of this area can't possibly be getting any sleep tonight... although it is pretty calm. No music right this moment; just the drone of wild applause both here and from some kind of speaker system.

"Wait here," Metadronis says, wading into the crowd. He stops just short of the pool, looking over the various silhouettes with scrutiny. Finally, he picks one and walks right up behind. He reaches over, pulls out the guy's wallet, and then... waves it right in front of his face.

"Yoohoo!" Metadronis taunts right into his ear, turning and dashing away right quick.

"Hey!" the boy shouts, giving chase. Metadronis weaves around the stunned onlookers and twirls around one attempted tackle by some random person. Metadronis stops just short of the group, putting his hands up in surrender with wallet dangling in his fingers and his back still turned.

The silhouette dissolves to reveal a boy of about seventeen or eighteen, dressed from head to toe in a motorcycle punk outfit. Black leather pants, a black leather jacket with bright yellow patches, and an off-white, milky shirt all stretch and crinkle to fit his buff, contoured form. All sorts of prickly accessories dangle from his wrists and neck, his light purple-blue, spiky neck-length hair... could it be?

"Freak," the boy says as he snatches his wallet and turns away.

"Riku?" Emily asks. That word stops him dead in his tracks. Yep, it's him, all right. Metadronis has done too good a job in arranging the other meetings for it to be anybody else.

"...yeah?" he says after a good, long pause, his back still turned.

"Riku!" Sora and Kairi both shout, rushing towards him and tackle hugging him from both sides. He stumbles forward a few steps and were it not for their opposing forces canceling each other out, either person would have easily toppled him over with their enthusiasm. Chou follows along, circling around to face Riku head on.

"Orphanage?" Emily asks with an unbelieving squint.

"I'm so glad to see you guys!" Riku says, completely ignoring Emily.

"I thought I'd never see you again!" Sora says with a squeeze.

"Where have you been?" Kairi asks.

"You won't believe how bad things have been..." Riku explains, his voice dropping as he glances over the other party-goers. Emily moves in closer, but Metadronis snaps a finger in front of her eyes. Startles her.

"Wha-" Emily attempts, irritated.

"Let them have their moment," Metadronis cuts off, turning around and gesturing towards the stadium, "You want to find out why I brought you here, yes?"

Emily glances back and forth between her friends and the not-angel in the grey suit. She wants to hear Riku's story. Really, she does, but she knows he'll be willing to tell it again. Metadronis, however, is way too important right now. The fact that he arranged all these meetings in the first place when it should have been as hard as finding meaningful commentary at a political convention shows a grand, if subtle, power. She'd much rather not risk pissing him off.

"...yeah," Emily says, following behind like a good little girl. Rather than the edge, Metadronis instead walks up to a drink hut and leaps up to catch the edge of the roof. He pulls himself up and turns around, offering a hand to Emily. As generous as that may be, now is as good a chance as any for her to test something that has been bugging her. She takes a few steps back, spreads her wings. leans forward, and flaps... to her actually rising off the ground. She's just as amazed as a couple of the gawking teenagers staring at her; so they aren't just the leftover for-show bits of hollow bone and fluffy plumage...

With a smile, Metadronis twirls around on his heel to face the stadium. No longer obscured by so many spectators, Emily can now see just how epic a show this is. The outside of the stadium features tens of thousands of huge screen televisions all interlocking to display camera feeds from within with just as many speakers behind and in between the panels. The screens remain clear even with a dark stage and so much bright light pouring from the entrance arches and the small hole at the top of the dome.

The stage doesn't remain dark too long for here come some soft green spotlights. They brighten up a half circle array of a dozen cascading stand-up keyboards, with just as many floor pedals underneath. Standing in the middle of them is a woman in her mid to late thirties. Dressed in a dark red corset dress and with arcane tattoos all over her exposed shoulders, it almost comes as a surprise that she merely has natural pale-blonde hair and an undecorated black electric guitar strapped to her back. Nobody Emily recognizes, certainly.

"Who's that?" Emily asks. Metadronis pulls out his pocket watch and glances it over.

"I guess my timing's off," Metadronis admits with a chuckle, softly plopping the watch in his pocket and sitting down, "Oh, well... we can wait."

Wordlessly, the girl in red lightly lifts an outstretched index finger and softly strokes a single key. The crowd cheers as a moody, ethereal synthesizer tone washes over them. She follows up by playing a very slow, haunting melody of processed strings and lingering piano with arms outstretched, head hung, and eyes closed. The crowd goes eerily silent as they sway with her harmony, a hushed awe washing over as she starts cooing with an innocent, otherworldly soprano into her microphone. It's all so very lovely, but is there some point to this?

"Seriously, who is that?" Emily asks again.

"You don't know?" says one of the gawking boys from below, almost outraged, "You have a _perfect_ Lady Angela cosplay and you _don't know who that is?_"

"I'm not dressed up as anybody..." Emily says. The boy jumps up and grabs at the roof, sliding one leg over the edge and yanking himself up. Just some relatively under-dressed scene kid without any make-up or hair dye. Nobody she knows.

"That's Miss Clare," the boy says, pointing oh-so-helpfully at the gigantic screen, "She's a classically trained pianist, you know. Used to do session work for people like Nina Gordon, Heather Nova, and Sarah Brightman."

"Sounds talented," Emily admits with all honesty. There is a definite something to this musician and the way she performs. It's like she lives within the very waves of her own musical creation and she's inviting everybody to join her. Awe-inspiring and simply breath-taking; she could very well tour on her strength alone.

After a short bit of this vaguely new age song, she segues seamlessly into jazz piano with both hands while using the pedals for a sampled violin backing. It only takes a few chords before a spotlight reveals the drummer playing a simple hi-hat pattern. Sitting in the middle of a red drum set is a man in his mid-forties wearing an elegant, vintage black tuxedo with a flowing cape. With a thick silver chain around his neck and a pair of half-moon spectacles, he looks... wait a second...

"Is that... Mr. Larkson?" Emily asks, squinting at the man's image. It's hard to tell because the camera has zoomed out to put Miss Clare back in the foreground.

"You mean Seth?" asks an unfamiliar, unremarkable girl that also climbed up from the other side.

"I... guess," Emily says, that name stirring some recognition. Must have been on a wall plaque or a restaurant registration or something. Miss Clare lifts her head up with a solemn expression, staring off into the distance as she starts singing with a whisper-soft dulcet.

_Sunday is gloomy, my hours are slumberless,  
Dearest the shadows I live with are numberless  
Little white flowers will never awaken you  
Not where the black coach of sorrow has taken you_

"He and Miss Clare are totally an item," the boy explains, "They're kind of like Fleetwood Mac."

"Oh, come on," the girl says with a mischievous smile, "Everyone knows that's a lie. Clare is totally doing it with Angela and they just _claim_ they're with the men to keep the tabloids off their backs. Heh, Angela... I'm sure Clare and Seth are just covering for her so she can make out with Nikki backstage while her hubby watches... ooh! The muse! She has struck!"

The girl whips out a notebook and frantically scrawls out some sloppy handwriting, lust in her eyes. The girl's drive to transcribe her deepest, most passionate thoughts brings feelings of nostalgia out of Emily. While she feels numb inside from everything that has happened, she still remembers those old days with the faintest glimmer.

"What's going on up here?" Sora asks. Emily turns to find that the rest of her friends have joined this now-overcrowded roof. Must be the new party spot because two other kids have climbed up and a third gets turned back with an open hand gesture.

"Yeah..." Emily says, staring at Metadronis, "What _is_ going on up here?"

"My timing's off," Metadronis says, pointing at a really specific part of the screen, "See that ledge, Chou?"

"Yeah," she says.

"You kno

And with another blip out and in reality, there they are. Emily stumbles back a little, the opposing stumbles of Riku and Sora as they hold her hands preventing her from toppling over the rail. Good for her because one glance down reveals a hundred meter drop down the side of the stadium. Too high to survive, too low to reorient and start flying.

She releases the boys' hands, shoves off the rail, and twirls to confirm that yep, they're in the stadium. She can see the thousands upon thousands of fans lightly cheering along to the music. It seems their rendition of 'Gloomy Sunday' has evolved into a free-form instrumental jazz duet, but given how close Emily and friends are to some speakers, it works a lot better for their eardrums. It's kind of funny how the biggest rock group in the universe has such a mellow pair of musicians, but the audience is still lapping it up all the same... well, all but the people that were on the earlier roof. They're all staring in total shock and awe at Emily and friends, but she doesn't care. There's no reason to hide their power.

"Shall we?" Metadronis says, a splintery snap coming from behind. Emily turns back around to find that he has casually bashed through the service door and now holds it for everybody to go through. She follows the group as they navigate the threadbare corridors of so much cabling and cooling, Kairi stumbling a little over one cluster. One would worry for their safety up here, but it doesn't take long to get to an observation window.

Sure enough, the stadium is sold out. Completely packed from the nosebleed section all the way down to the converted football field. All eyes are focused on the stage by the visitor's goal and damn, is it a doozy. As if the sixteen ton JumboTron box hanging from the center ceiling isn't enough, a hundred meter cylindrical array of television screens funnel down to just ten meters over the stage proper. People that call the movies 'larger than life' clearly have no sense of scale: the movies are crappy YouTube videos from overenthusiastic dads with Flip cameras as seen on iPhones compared to the overwhelming spectacle of this stage.

With one final flourish from Clare and Seth sending one last lingering piano chord and cymbal crash, every last light shuts off. Distorted guitar feedback gradually drowns out that fading remnant, growing thicker and stronger as green lasers scan the crowd. An obvious build-up to some kind of surprise.

And with a blast, a heavily processed guitar and bass hook slams through the arena. Everybody cheers as spotlights bathe Seth, Clare on guitar, and two new men in deep red light. The camera chooses to watch a scruffy brown haired, bearded indie-type in a plaid shirt and black slacks. He plays the lead guitar while standing eerily still, staring down at the four dozen floor pedals and barely acknowledging the microphone in front of his mouth. Shoegazer. For whatever bizarre reason, Emily recognizes it as the lead singer and guitarist of Silversun Pickups. There's a bit of trivia from the pages of Rolling Stone that she never would have expected to remember. The guy finishes his frantic opening and starts singing in a high falsetto over some very light chords and a repetitive bass hook.

_Time... is never worth my time  
Moonshine... bleeds into my eye  
I still... sleep on the right side  
But the white noise... can't leave the scene behind_

All the while, the other man playing bass is barely visible behind the singer. Just like Clare, he has chosen red as his primary color. Red business coat, pale red dress shirt, red slacks, red shoes, black bass guitar, and a red fedora on his head. Decorated with three feathers white, grey, and black, the rim casts a shadow over his forward hung head. Still, even unable to see his face, Emily swears she recognizes something in his frame and the way he moves. Something almost second nature...

Before she can make a connection, the camera snaps to the drummers. Drummers, plural, each at their own full drum kit. Red and black. Seems the Silversun Pickups are fully playing side by side with Heart of Silence, with some guy taking Clare's keyboard post. Still, that only accounts for three quarters of each band. The lead vocalist starts crunching out some heavily distorted guitar as he yanks his head up.

_Could I be anything you want me to be?  
If so, is it meant to be seeeeeen?_

And with that lingering note, the lights start blinking like strobes. The guitarist starts an ascending sequence of rapid strums as the camera shuffles just as fast between all the players. Clare, Seth, the man in red, and all three of the Silversun Pickups, but also two women as well. Too fast and blinky to make them out, but they're on guitars as well. All this energy keeps building and building as the song grows louder until an explosion of fireworks heralds the whole stage lighting up to a crescendo of a chorus.

_When you see yourself in a crowded room  
Do your fingers itch, are you pistol whipped?  
Will you step in line or release the glitch?  
Can you fall asleep with a panic switch?_

Finally in the light, Emily can make out the two women singing together into the same microphone. A plain brunette in some regular street clothes playing bass guitar must belong to Silversun Pickups. She's drowned out by the larger-than-life stature of the woman next to her. Dressed in a black, sleeveless Victorian-style petticoat with a huge black ribbon on her back, her long black hair drapes... holy crap, it can't be...

"Mom?" Emily gasps in total shock. It's just... what the hell does somebody even say to a revelation like this?

"Now you get it," Metadronis says with a chuckle.

"But... it can't..." Emily mutters. A lingering shot on the bassist in red reveals what should now be plainly obvious: her dad.

"Believe it," Metadronis says in a knowing tone.

_When you see yourself in a crowded room  
Do your fingers itch, are you pistol whipped?  
Will you step in line or release the glitch?  
Do you think she'll sleep with a panic?_

Emily stares awe-struck at the stage as people she has known her entire life show a side completely foreign to her. Sure, they sometimes talked about their days in a struggling local band, but it always came across as pitiful nostalgia not unlike talking about that fabled novel. There was never any sign that they could be so lively. So charismatic. So sexy. They have all the best moves, all the best gestures, all the best poses, and it all fits the song to the cadence. They perfectly convey so much desire and yet so much purity. So much strength, reserve, control. So much heart and soul. It's like they embody the very spirit of everybody that has ever wished for sympathy and understanding.

Emily glances back to her equally-awestruck friends. Awestruck not by the band, but by her. What? Did they only now realize that she still has her wings for some inexplicable reason or that they actually work?

"Oh my god..." Kairi says with starry eyes, "You have the coolest parents _ever!_"

"Yeah..." Sora says, "What was it like growing up with them?"

"It wasn't anything special..." Emily mutters, her mind overloaded, "They were just... normal... this is just so much. I just... I just can't believe these are my parents... you know? It's like they got replaced... with way more interesting people... kind of like _The Thing..._ but with rock stars instead of hideous monsters..."

The bands finishes up a thoroughly distorted, alienated guitar solo in time for the lead singer to resume his duties.

_I'm waiting and fading and floating away  
Waiting and fading and floating away  
Waiting and fading and floating away  
Waiting and fading, waiting and fading_

"...this isn't happening," Emily says, caressing her temples, "I refuse to believe it. There is no way any of this is real."

"Why?" Metadronis asks.

"What do you mean?" Emily says.

"Why don't you want to believe they're your parents?" Metadronis clarifies.

"Because it's just so... _wrong_," Emily continues, "It's wrong on every level. It's wrong that these people I've known all my life have never shown me this side. It's wrong that they could be this talented and keep it from the world for so long. It's wrong that they chose to be a dull suburbanite housewife and corporate... I don't even remember. It's wrong how there's this huge legion of fans for them when they're in their forties. It's wrong that they can even _have_ a fanbase like this after only three years."

"Really just one year," Metadronis corrects, raising his voice as the song builds to a final crescendo of so much beautiful noise. Even with her back turned to the window, the flashing strobes paint a flickering picture of spotlights, lasers, and fireworks.

"That's even _worse_," Emily says, "I mean just... no. Nobody's that good at marketing. Nobody appeals across so many cultures. It's just..."

"Magic?" Metadronis says with a wink. An eruption of applause drowns out one last lingering guitar note, bringing Emily's attention back on stage. The members of Silversun Pickups play up the crowd with their celebratory gestures, bowing and shaking hands with Heart of Silence. Emily's mom Angela walks up and grabs a microphone off a stand.

"You didn't think we'd let them go without playing 'Panic Switch', did you?" she asks to cheers and whistles, walking up to the Silversun Pickups singer and chastely hugging him. He wanders off after a few seconds and Angela moves on to the bassist, hugging her much closer and giving a lingering kiss on her cheek. Squees of delight from a much higher pitch fill the stadium. The bassist blushes and smiles with her head down as she walks off the stage, holding back an embarrassed laugh. No doubt this single moment has given so much erotic fantasy material for all the fanfic writers in attendance.

With Silversun Pickups now off the stage, a new pair of people approach from the side. One is a guy in his fifties with short, teased-up blonde hair and a fairly simple black business casual outfit complete with a button down overshirt. Practically screams electronica. The other is a woman about ten years younger with wavy brown hair and a flowing greenish-silver dress. The guy is a total unknown as far as Emily is concerned, but there's something familiar about this woman. She knows this is somebody famous, but who... the crowd must know. It takes a second to make out their chant, but they're definitely saying 'Sarah'... the question is which 'Sarah' is this...

"Sarah needs no introduction," Angela says with a chuckle, both of the others taking microphones of their own, "But the man next to her is a real unsung hero, our single biggest influence and the reason we're here today."

"You're too kind," he says with a smirk, turning to face the crowd, "Hello, everybody. My name is Bill Leeb and I... _am_... Delerium."

After a second or two pause, the crowd slowly erupts into a roar of applause. The kind of pause that greets a total, unexpected surprise. This is where knowing the lore of a band would really help because Emily is totally lost right now. Excusing that her parents... or some facsimile thereof are involved, she would have at least looked the band up on Wikipedia or something before coming out to this show. It probably has all the answers such as who this Sarah is or why one is supposed to cheer on this 'Bill Leeb'.

"Bill here also worked on Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, and Synæsthesia," Angela helpfully adds, "And his buddy Rhys does some good work with Conjure One. Links should be coming through all the feeds in just a few seconds."

Lots of flickering from cell phones pulsate through the audience. As if it's vital to look up the bands Angela mentioned right this very second. Emily can imagine the most diehard fans buying everything completely unheard.

"Drumming up some more overnight platinums from the mindless masses, are we?" Sarah prods with a mischievous smile. The crowd noise dies down with those words. What? Even Emily with all her mental problems can tell this Sarah is being 'ironic'. Where's their sense of humor?

"Why, Sarah, whatever could you mean?" Angela says with a mischievous smile of her own. She's not that great an actress because it's pretty obviously scripted. Not like any good concert doesn't have some kind of outline, but this lacks suspension of disbelief. Whatever. Bill shakes his head solemnly and pulls a couple printed sheets from under his overshirt.

"I'm sorry to say not everybody was pleased with last night's performance," Bill says with a sigh, handing the stack over. Angela pulls out a pair of vintage reading glasses and pops them on with a scholarly face.

"Oh, hey, Heather from Pitchfork," Angela says with a smile, "She's great. I love her. Let's see... 'Not since Led Zeppelin has a rock band acting purely on their own impulses and styles captured such a zeitgeist of loyalty and devotion.' I can go with that. By the way, 'Rain Song', best Zep song. Check it out... 'Unlike Led Zeppelin, however, Heart of Silence will not outlive their inexplicable popularity and deserves every last jab, criticism, and dismissal sent their way...'"

Angela's ever-present smile slowly disappears as that line sinks in. It's hard to tell if she's acting or if this is for real. The first instinct is always to assume it's fake, but here... who knows?

"'They talk of paying dues to their inspirations'," Angela continues, her tone somber, "'But the reality is that they need livelier acts to fill their hollow shell; acts that are lining up to appease these unlikely kingmakers. In fact, the average Heart of Silence fan is so mindless and open to suggestion, all it takes is a single mention of bands as diverse in sound and era as Muse, Nine Inch Nails, Within Temptation, Yes, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Incubus, and Kill Hannah to drag them to the top of the charts and every album and single they link on their dozen web pages goes platinum quite literally overnight.' Wow... that's one loooooong sentence."

The audience boos and hisses at these statements. Angela bites the inside of her cheek as she scans over the sheets quickly, peeking at the next page for a second.

"'This sway they hold on the buying public means there will never be a shortage of sycophants to keep up their parasitic, self-feeding success'," Angela continues, "'Indeed, their performances are less like concerts and more like festivals, averaging three hours, six guest acts, and only two short intermissions on the hour. Fitting, given their explosive breakout at Lilith 2010 where they went from Village Stage outcasts to stealing the show from even our lady McLachlan herself.' Hey, she mentioned you!"

Sarah gives kind of a half-beam at this wayward compliment... wait, this is Sarah McLachlan? Miss 'Building a Mystery' herself? But she's... the exact opposite of rock. How can she be popular with this crowd even by association? It's just... wrong. Everything about this is wrong.

"Yada yada yada, their music is bad and they should feel bad, don't waste your time, et cetera..." Angela sarcastically summarizes, "...oh, here's a good part! 'Their success can be likened to them being little more than a female Nickelback: a band telling an undiscriminating audience exactly what it wants to hear with as little personality as possible'."

Angela makes the most exaggerated pouty face physically possible, with eyebrows raised and her lower lip overturned. Sarah and Bill watch with unreadable smiles as Angela traces a finger from her eye down her cheek with her microphone hand. She hands the stack to Dave as he walks by, puts the microphone back in its stand, and very slowly reaches down to gently strum a somber rhythm from her still-overdriven guitar.

"This is how... you remind me... of what I really am..." Angela sings in as whimpering a tone as possible, breaking character with a blank stare as she rapidly stomps a bunch of the dozens of guitar pedal, "Alright, everyone, you heard the review. You shouldn't be here because Heather hates us. Concert's off, everybody go home!"

A mixture of laughter and outrage fills the arena. It seems for all her posturing, there are plenty of people that don't quite get the joke. Angela goes back to her usual self, adjusting the microphone.

"But seriously," Angela says, "I just don't _get_ that. I mean... she's calling us marketing shills, right? Sell-outs? But that's just not true. I mean... it's not like we don't have a _chance_ to shill some acts for a lot of money. Why, Apple offered us a million dollars a pop for us to simply _mention_ Auto-Tune garbage like Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Black Eyed Peas, and that lush Kesha by name in public... send the check to Love Our Children USA or some other charity linked on our homepage because we don't want your money."

Not quite as many laughs to that joke, but then again, it's hard to tell if it was intended as such.

"You should tell them about Warner Music Group," Sarah prompts.

"Oh, yeah," Angela says with a chuckle, "Warner saw some of the action our guest stars were getting and wanted in, but they don't get us. They wanted us to have friggin' Shinedown and crap join us."

Angela steps back, quickly stomps a bunch of pedals, and starts playing some guitar riff. Something very... mainstream radio rock. After about a riff and a half, she abruptly lets the guitar go and steps up to the microphone again.

"Yeah, that's hardly the 'sound of madness', if you ask me," Angela quips with a smirk, only a small scattering of the audience laughing, "I mean... I'm happy they got us in touch with Billy Corgan, but that doesn't mean we need them sending a dozen emails a day suggesting groups like Foo Fighters to share the stage... no offense, Dave."

The camera cuts to none other than Dave Grohl sitting in a seat, laughing out of embarrassed surprise. However, it's the person sitting next to him that really catches Emily's eye: Josh friggin' Homme, Mr. Queens of the Stone Age himself. It's just... perfect synchronicity. Before she can get much of a reading, the camera cuts back to Angela.

"But seriously, people," Angela continues, "We're not in this for the money. I mean yeah, the four of us have made about 150 million after taxes and we have to admit we _did_ keep some of it for, well, food and agents and junk... but we've put nearly _all_ of our money towards improving our show. You think the label paid for those screens and Voice of God™ speaker system on the sides of the stadium? Of course not. All _they_ care about are the paying ticket holders inside and could care less about overselling and turning people back, but not us. We put our wealth towards making sure everybody who makes the pilgrimage to see us... damn well _sees_ us!"

The audience cheers and hollers at such a defiant proclamation. Some root for Angela by name while others root for Heart of Silence as a whole. A total chaos of uncoordinated cheer for their graven idols. Angela laps it all up with a smile, turning around to look over the full 360 degrees of cheering fans.

"I just really... _love_ music," Angela says, her voice breaking a little, "And since I've been gifted with so many people that really _care_ about what I say, I want to share that love with everybody in the world. I mean... Kurt Cobain always gave a list of his favorite bands at every interview and nobody gave him crap for that, did they? I'm just in a position where I can get all my favorite bands here on stage with us. Why shouldn't I? You said yourself that we average three hours. That's three times longer than nearly any other band in the majors can ever manage. I just... your words hurt me and make me feel all bad inside and stuff..."

Angela resumes her exaggerated pouty face and sniffles. This has to be all be an act on her part. Just... has to. Again, Emily has never seen this side of her mom before. She has always been calm, composed, and all-around motherly. It's so unlike her to be such a... whiny teenager... maybe that's the appeal of this band? Sarah walks up and gently holds Angela, sending a minor wave of squees through the audience.

"Don't worry about any of those vultures," Sarah consoles, "I knew the moment I saw you on stage guest singing for the Ocean City Symphony Orchestra three years ago that you had that spark. It's only just that you found so many people to share in it. Nobody has ever made it without Pitchfork hating their guts, anyway."

"But... that review must have dragged our Metacritic score below 95..." Angela whimpers, "It's like getting an A minus."

"There, there," Sarah says, "Not everybody can appreciate the beauty of songs like 'Dearest Emily' and 'Aptakisic Ro-"

"Mad Mike can go to _frickin' hell_," Angela quickly interjects, her fake pouting suddenly shifting to genuine anger, "I turned down Howard frickin' _Stern_ to appear on his awful local show and what does he do? He accuses me of making up Emily as some marketing stunt; that I'm playing the autism card for sympathy. There I am giving a boost for independent radio, opening myself to him, and he's throwing this conspiracy crap in my face. How frickin' _dare_?"

The audience goes into a hushed awe, Sarah and Bill backing up just a little. Angela closes her eyes and hyperventilates a bit, composing herself. Her rage subsided to a mere fiery passion, she picks up the microphone and walks up to the very tip of the stage.

"Don't _ever_ let anyone tell you you're not good enough because of who you are," Angela says with watery eyes, gesturing to the crowd, "If _anyone_ ever gives you a hard time because you're different, you go out there and you prove them wrong. You show them that your differences make you a better person. Why, just look at me. Maybe I wasn't diagnosed until after my daughter and never had it as bad as her, but I had to overcome Asperger tendencies of my own. I'm no paragon, but I would never choose to be. Damaged, unwanted people like us are the ones that change the world. Not them. They're going to be stuck cleaning up baby vomit at Burger King."

Some people in the crowd start clapping their hands, but most are still shocked into silence.

"And for those of you still in school," Angela continues through her tears, the clapping dying down, "If you see some asshole bullying somebody, you team up with your friends and you frickin' _beat_ their ass. You make them beg for mercy and go one hit further just in case. Don't bother going to the teachers or principal because they won't do _jack_. They let my daughter get tormented every day and look what happened. I will never go a single day without thinking that maybe, just maybe, she hid away and... _killed_ herself. No! Never again! Don't trust the administration to work it out because they'll ignore scum of the earth like Dana Billett. Yeah, Chris, I hope you're thinking about _your_ missing harlot of a daughter while you rot in Club _Fed!_"

An awkward silence hangs over the entire stadium as Angela stands there, fuming with an unquenchable fire. Even to the uninitiated, this comes as a shocking break of character. The other stuff is some mixture of genuine compassion and the slightest irony, but this outburst goes beyond the playful into genuinely dark territory. She really does want confused teenagers to dish out vigilante justice and not the glamorous comic book kind, either. Still, even with their expectations broken, the audience slowly starts cheering. They see Angela as she really is, broken by sorrow, and they accept her. Really, they do. Sarah slowly approaches from behind, Angela turning to face.

"...I crossed a line there, didn't I?" Angela asks over her shoulder.

"Just a little..." Sarah admits.

"The tabloids are gonna run wild with this," Angela says with a sad chuckle, "Probably already has a Twitter hashcode. #AngelaAgitated."

"Nobody can blame you," Sarah says, "We all saw that video. It was horrifying. I'd be just as angry if I thought India or Taja were being bullied like that and the school was doing nothing about it."

"We all need a release some time," Bill comments somberly, walking up to the two women, "It's what makes this next song so fitting... mind if I borrow your guitar?"

"Why?" Angela asks, apparently back on script. Well, her blank gaze can now be explained by a simple psychiatric label, so there's that. No further discussion needed.

"You're a great guitarist," Bill says, "But it holds you back. You have the voice of an angel and everybody deserves to hear your love and passion undiluted. Please: for everyone that has ever felt angry and frustrated about their lives."

Angela pauses for a few seconds, apparently contemplating her actions. The crowd goes completely silent as she unstraps her guitar, kneeling down and offering the instrument up to her own personal idol. It almost carries the tone of the president saluting a general. Bill gently grabs the guitar and waits for Angela to let go, carefully strapping it on and playing a single chord. Angela breaks character a second as she stomps a succession of floor pedals, the guitar shifting from imitation post-grunge crunch to a chorus-fed, mythical acoustic. Angela grabs the nearest microphone from its stand and wraps the cord around her wrist.

"This next song is called 'Silence'," Angela narrates as Clare and Seth rise from backstage, running back to their posts, "It's only coincidence that our names line up, but I could wish for nothing more beautiful to share the mantle."

All the lights dim except for a fuchsia one shining on Clare as she plays a single rising, lingering note. Some kind of Gregorian chant that resonates of Emily's dad Dave joins the tapestry, just ahead of the soothing tone and underneath the gentle acoustic guitar. A moody, ethereal dive into sheer, unquantifiable emotion.

"You there?" says a male voice.

"...huh?" Emily says, blinking the dryness out of her eyes. Lost herself. She turns to look at her worried friends.

"Is something wrong?" Riku asks.

"...everything's wrong," Emily mutters, "Just... everything..."

"Who cares if it's wrong?" Metadronis asks, "What's more important is how are you going to make it right?"

"I don't know what you're talking about..." Emily says, turning back to look at the stage. The song has taken on a more driving beat with the addition of drums and bass, but still retains that moody tapestry. Nearly everybody is bathed in some kind of pale-purple whirlpool of light, with only Angela properly illuminated. She puts so much pain and sorrow in her gestures as she sings with an angelic longing.

_Give me... reeeee-leeease  
Wiiiiiiit-nessssss me  
I am... ouuuuut-siiiiiide  
Give me... peeeeeace_

"What are you going to do now?" Metadronis asks. Sarah enters the spotlight and the two of them stare longingly into each other's eyes to much fangirl delight as they sing together into the same microphone.

_Heaven holds a sense of wonder and I wanted to believe  
That I'd get caught up when the rage in me subsides_

"Mutant freak or not," Emily says, looking over a shoulder and twitching a wing, "I just _have_ to get back to them."

_Passion... choke the flower  
Till. She. Cries. No. More  
Possessing all the beauty  
Hungry stillllll for more_

"Is that _really_ the best thing to do?" Metadronis asks.

"Of course," Emily says, turning to face, "I mean... why wouldn't I?"

"Maybe you think it's best for you..." Metadronis sighs, "But is it best for them?"

_Heaven holds a sense of wonder and I wanted to believe  
That I'd get caught up when the rage in me subsides_

"You heard her back there," Emily says, "My disappearance was the worst thing to ever happen to them. I heard so much pain in her voice. It's obvious nothing can ever help them move on. I mean... they're the biggest stars in the world with millions of fans and they're still not happy..."

Emily turns back to look down at the stage. Angela looks so sad and broken even while performing one of her favorite songs. There she is, singing a duet with femme music legend Sarah McLachlan and it's clear she can only think of her lost daughter. The one that she tried so hard to understand and now believes to be gone forever.

_In this white wave, I am sinking, in this siiiiii-lence  
In this white wave, in this silence, I be-liiiiiieve_

"Don't you think maybe there's a connection?" Metadronis asks.

"How so?" Emily says.

"Marketing can manufacture a star," Metadronis explains, "A Justin Bieber, N*SYNC, Bay City Rollers, what have you, but they never last. There's only so long a fake star can be forced upon an audience before they see through the cracks to the vapid interior. It takes something more to become a legend; to become a Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Pearl Jam."

_I can't... help this longing  
Comm-forrrrrt me  
I can't... hold it all innnnnnnnnn  
If. You. Won't. Let. Me_

"I don't get what that has to do with anything..." Emily comments.

"Her longing drives her music," Metadronis says, "It is her pain and sorrow that makes their music so captivating. It's what gives her that edge over so many fake, uninspired, all-around happy musicians. She tries to fill the hole you left in her life with her music and the adoration of her fans, but it is bottomless. That's why she'll keep building and building far past any concept of 'good enough'. Do you think she should be robbed of that?"

_Heaven holds a sense of wonder and I wanted to believe  
That I'd get caught up when the rage in me subsides_

"They don't deserve to be so broken," Emily says, turning back to look down at the stage, "I mean... they _need_ to know where I've been. They _need_ to know that I really do love them despite everything I said."

"If not your parents..." Metadronis says, walking up and gesturing at the tens of thousands of people in the stands, "Think of all those people. It's hard to imagine, but the legend of Heart of Silence isn't even halfway finished. Their meteoric rise to fame has only just begun now that Angela had that outburst. Many bands sit around wistfully thinking about that fabled triple-platinum; Heart of Silence is destined to go triple-diamond... twice. Just like Nirvana with 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', they are destined to walk onto a tainted landscape and wipe the slate clean. You've seen how all the counter-cultural tribes share in their music. They're destined to turn hatred and intolerance into a thing of the past... if just in first world countries."

"I thought you said there was no destiny..." Emily mutters. Angela and Sarah lock hands and foreheads together as they put their all into one final verse.

_In this white wave, I am sinking, in this siiiiii-lence  
In this white wave, in this silence, I be-liiiiiieve  
I have seen you, in this white wave, you are siiiiiii-lent  
You are breathing, in this white wave, I am freeeeeeeeeeeee_

"There is no destiny; only possibility," Metadronis corrects, "I have merely seen a thousand futures of this world play out and every one with Angela alone brings a new age of enlightenment. Every one where you reunite with your parents turns Heart of Silence into a short-lived fad and leaves the world a worse place for it. After all, what reinforces a regime of hatred and intolerance more than the spectacular failure of somebody trying to end it?"

"I refuse to believe music can change the world..." Emily sighs, the band going into some kind of electronic-tinged new age trance melody. Metadronis pulls out his pocket watch for another glance, a spark of hurry flashing in his eyes. He raps his cane across the window and all of the sudden, all the noise drops to nothing. A perfect pocket of silence just for them.

"Not just their music," Metadronis corrects again, his pace just a bit faster, "But their activism as well. They have the ears of an eager youth that believes it can change the world. Any politician they support will be elected, leading all the way up to a presidential upset in 2020. Any corporation they dismiss will falter; why, they're powerful enough to challenge even Wal-Mart. They have an unwavering optimism, a drive to make the world better, and an incorruptible purity that no amount of bribery or bullying can ever sway. Their love conquers all, but if you reunite with them, you'll rob that love from the rest of the world. Don't you see? You _complete_ them."

Emily hangs her head as she thinks over everything Metadronis has said. She still finds this whole scenario of previously-unknown people in their mid-forties with this much emotional depth gathering so many fans in only a year bewildering and, frankly, impossible, but she has seen a lot of impossible things... done some impossible things. Her very existence is biologically impossible, so rock megastar parents? Especially now that magic has come back to this world? Sure, why not?

Even then, this whole implication reeks. She can't reunite because she'd 'rob their love'? It makes it sound as if her very presence destroys all that it touches. That she was a burden upon her parents and only in her 'death' are they free to bring their dreams to life. It's one thing to have moody thoughts pondering about one's toxic existence, but it's another to have them proven true... and what kind of sadist is this not-an-angel-he-swears to bring her within gliding distance of her parents and then lay all this on her? What was even the point of coming here just to be told to walk away?

"Besides," Metadronis continues, glancing at his watch, "You don't even realize how public you'd become. The long-lost daughter of the world's biggest cultural force, reunited at last? And as a bona-fide angel? You'd never be left alone for the rest of your days. If nothing else, you're a consummate introvert. It's not in you to get so much attention."

"I get it, already..." Emily mutters, "...wait, _I'm_ an angel?"

"Words, words, words..." Metadronis sighs.

"What are you suggesting I do, anyway?" Emily asks, "Fly to a cave on top of Mount Everest and cut my throat out with a rock? Because you make it sound like the world is a worse place with me in it."

"Don't say things like that!" Kairi says, shocked. Slightly startles Emily; she completely forgot about her four friends standing there. Almost kind of embarrassing.

"What do you think I _should_ do, then?" Emily asks, "I apparently can't go back to my parents without ruining the world and I can't go to anyone I know. They'd all tell mom and dad about me. I really don't want to be homeless and you guys make the orphanage sound awful."

"Eh..." Riku shrugs, "It could be worse. Three hots and a cot."

"I'm sure a government-run orphanage would turn me over to some agency that wants to cut me apart..." Emily says, eliciting a chuckle from Metadronis, "...what? What's so funny?"

"There are already several hundred pictures and videos people took of you with their cell phones and posted online," Metadronis explains with a condescending smile, "With several thousand Facebook Likes, Tweets, YouTube Faves, and about sixty thousand user comments. Some reporters are already planning to write about you and Digg is going to front-page one of them tomorrow. The government wouldn't _dare_ try to kidnap you for experiments. At most, they'd politely ask for some respectful, non-invasive tests."

"Still..." Emily says, "I wouldn't be left alone there, would I?"

"You're doomed to stick out no matter where you go," Metadronis admits, "You're just lucky you didn't wind up in a fundamentalist country like Pakistan or an oppressive regime like China. Now _they_ would cut you to pieces without a moment's hesitation."

"That doesn't answer the question, though," Emily says.

"Which ques-" Metadronis attempts.

"What do you think I should do?" Emily cuts off. She's getting used to his frustrating parroting. Metadronis pulls out his watch for yet another glance.

"You've always wanted to be a hero," Metadronis says, "And the first try was a... mixed success, but you get to have another. See, it's no coincidence that we bumped into all your friends."

"Gee, no crap..." Emily quips.

"I gathered all of you on this world for a reason," Metadronis continues, now addressing everybody, "Despite all our best efforts, Maleficent escaped to this universe and nobody here is equipped to stop her. It's going to take heroes with just as mythic an origin and magic of their own to stand the ground. Who's up for putting a stop to the renegade seraph once and for all?"

"Of course!" Sora says with a triumphant fist pump.

"Hell _yeah_, I'm in," Riku says a determined frown.

"Count me in!" Kairi says. Chou merely nods her head. Metadronis glances over his watch again.

"What about you, our fallen angel?" Metadronis asks, turning to gaze into Emily's eyes, "Isn't this what you've always wanted? A sense of real purpose? To have your actions really, truly matter?"

"I suppose..." Emily admits, looking down and away, "But I'm just sick of all the violence. I'm sick of seeing so many people die so senselessly. War is just unending pain and misery with no reprieve and stopping Maleficent would only be the start. I just want to go back to a normal life."

"But a normal life is impossible for you," Metadronis counters, "Unless you amputate your wings, but they'll grow back in only a few days. Really painfully, might I add. I made sure of it."

"...you were lying when you said you couldn't change me..." Emily mutters with head hung, staring up at Metadronis, "...weren't you?"

"Believe what you want," Metadronis says with a shrug, "It doesn't matter. What _does_ matter is the obligation you hol-"

"Oh, friggin' _obligation_," Emily cuts off, irritated, "What the hell kind of cruel bastard are you? You bring me to this concert just to tell me that I'd ruin the world if I went to my parents? Are you _trying_ to anger me?"

"I'm just giving you a choice," Metadronis says.

"What the hell kind of choice is this?" Emily protests, "The world or my happiness? Well, you know what? I don't believe it. I don't believe that my parents can change the world as much as you say and even if they could, I don't believe whatever gives them that power will vanish if I go to them. You say I have a choice? Well, I'm making the wrong one, goddammit."

"Come on, Kiko," Chou says, walking over and lightly rubbing Emily's shoulders from behind, "Don't spite us just to spite him."

"Yeah..." Sora says, "It just wouldn't be the same without you."

"Are you saying I should abandon my parents?" Emily asks.

"That's not what we're saying at all," Riku corrects, "You're already dead to them. It won't make their lives any worse if you leave it that way."

"But it won't make their lives better, either," Emily counters, "Don't they deserve to be happy?"

"Nobody who led a happy life ever meant anything," Metadronis muses.

"...I have an idea," Sora says, "Who says we can't ever meet with them? We could just wait for when they get that president elected."

"Nine years?" Emily says, irritated, "You want to wait nine _friggin_' years?"

"Hey, just saying..." Sora shrugs.

"Why are you all taking his side, anyway?" Emily asks.

"...because he saved our lives and brought us together?" Kairi says, sheepishly.

"He?" Sora asks, confused. Metadronis glances at his watch once again, quickly stuffing it back in a hurry.

"Well, regardless," Metadronis says with rushed finality, pulling a sealed document from his vest, "Maleficent is here, she's dangerous, and the world isn't ready to stop her. It's only a matter of time until she finds out that all of you are here now that moody girl here... ahem... _reawakened_ you all. Even the United States military on its home turf won't stop her from tracking you down and you'd only be so lucky to merely get killed. Even then, I'm sure Emily here has more important things to do like trampling over the new enlightenment to satisfy her teenage angst, but I have to stop here. I've overstepped my bounds as it is. My role is merely to bring you all together and let you all work out your own futures."

Metadronis walks over to Sora and hands over the sealed document.

"In here is the location of a certain dark sorceress," Metadronis says, "And maybe even a scientist as well. Fire and ice, magic and technology."

Out of nowhere, sparks begin to appear hovering around Metadronis. A soft breeze carries him up a millimeter a second as his body vaporizes just as slowly. From his fingertips in, his every atom bursts into a shower of rising, vanishing sparks. His clothing hangs limp over his disappearing body, dropping into a pile as the last little bit of his form vaporizes into the ether. Still, a voice lingers from the beyond.

_It all comes down on you._

* * *

**And that's where my role in telling this story ends. I'll leave it up to my loyal fanbase of a couple dozen Faves/Alerts to debate which fork Emily should choose, what she would choose, and the implications they hold. There are plenty more adventures to be had and maybe someday, I'll renege this Japanese-style open ending to explore them, so don't take off your alert. For now, I feel like I've said everything I want to about our favorite autistic anti-hero. So like Nomura, I know...  
**

**Like a tedious Academy Awards acceptance speech, I'd like to thank everybody that stuck with this story the whole way through. You guys are all awesome and the reason I could go for so long. Now, I'm not going to nag, but there are totally some icons at the upper-right most corner of this page that could use some pressing. Up to you, though. Those of you who skipped straight to the end... eh, you probably don't understand what the hell you just read, but feel free to click anyway.  
**

**In other news, I'm going forward with an original fiction career. Yeah, I know, this totally kills my cred as a fanfiction author, but I think my transgressions against the Kingdom Hearts canon kind of sealed that fate a long, long time ago. This has really been my musings from the very beginning and I do intend to explore a lot of the ideas I brought up.  
**

**Cred or not, if you're interested in getting an early peek and some influence on the next big thing, just send me a private message. For legal, copyright, get-me-a-publisher reasons, I can't go public with either my work-in-progress or the author persona to go with it. Still, if you seem cool, I'm more than happy to let you in. Think of it as being a fan of an indie rock sensation while they're still playing to half-empty bars.  
**

**Anyway, I suppose that's it. Thank you, you're awesome, keep reading, keep writing, keep playing video games, keep looking for new experiences, and all-around not watching television. Down with passive mindlessness!  
**

**Best.  
**


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